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New- Church Popular Series. [No. 12, 



Progressive Thought 



ON 



GREAT SUBJECTS/* 



REV. N. F. RAVLIN, 

Pastor of the First Baptist Church, San Jose, California. 



u Prove all things ; hold fast that which is good." — 1 Thess. v. 21. 




PHILADELPHIA: 
SWEDENBORG PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION, 

900 Chestnut Street. 



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Copyright 
By THE SWEDENBORG PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION, 

1886. 



WM. F. FELL & CO., 
ELECTROTYPERS AND PRINTERS- 
PHILADELPHIA. 



^I^^^ fe^rf^ 



NOTE BY THE EDITOR. 



The editor of the present volume takes this 
opportunity to express his gratification at, what 
seems to him, the excellent example which the 
writer has set for all who claim to be ministers of 
the Gospel of our Lord. 

The author — as the reader will not fail to notice 
— has boldly asserted his right and duty to depart 
from the teachings of a time-honored creed, when- 
ever these are clearly seen to disagree with the 
teachings of the inspired Word ; his right, also, to 
seek instruction outside of the ordinary channels, 
or of his own particular denomination, and to read 
whatever books he finds that help him to a better 
understanding of the Bible, and of the laws and 
orderly development of the soul's higher life. For 
this he is to be warmly commended — and all the 
more so, because the step is one which, however 
proper and right in itself, few ministers have had 
the courage to take. 

And not less are the author's church and con- 
iii 



iv Note by the Editor. 

gregation to be commended for their independence 
and Christian manliness in standing by their pas- 
tor, and upholding and justifying him in his inde- 
pendent course. Let the pews everywhere be as 
wise and considerate, and the effect of their action 
would soon be visible in the increased freedom and 
fearlessness of the pulpit, " progressive thought" 
w r ould manifest itself more and more, and the signs 
of a new advent of the Lord to the minds and 
hearts of men, would rapidly multiply; and thus 
would the interests of true religion and religious 
progress be promoted, and the Divine promise, 
"Behold, I make all things new," would be has- 
tened to its fulfillment on the higher no less than 
on the lower planes of human thought and action. 

B. F. B e 

Germantown, July 17th, 1886. 



-^V^^^>-«^— 



PREFACE. 



OOST people inherit their religious beliefs, as 
they do their political opinions, from their 
ancestors. The child naturally follows in the foot- 
steps of his father. He learns to look upon what 
his father does as right, and to regard what he 
believes as true. Children are early taught the 
religious beliefs of their parents, and as dutiful 
children they accept them without question. 

Thoroughly schooled in this or that sectarian 
belief, as a general rule they grow to riper years 
in the same faith. True or false, it makes no 
difference. It is according to what they have 
been taught, and they know no other religion ; 
or, they believe all other religions to be erroneous. 
They do not investigate Truth for themselves. 
They simply accept what they have been taught 
as the sum total of truth, and seek no further 
information. They have been taught that it would 
be impious to do so. It would be casting asper- 



vi Preface. 

sions upon the faith of their parents, and pro- 
faning their early instructions. 

Men enter the ministry, and preach for years 
the particular phase of religion in which they 
were educated, never doubting but that they are 
preaching the truth according to the Word of 
the Lord ; when in fact they are proclaiming the 
dogmas of some particular creed, and seeking to 
confirm them from the Word. In this way, aud 
by such means, truth is often falsified, and error 
is confirmed as truth. 

One can never know " what is truth " until he 
is taught of God. When, in humble sincerity, 
he seeks with all his heart to know the truth, 
God will not leave him in darkness. It is accord- 
ing to his promise that the Holy Comforter, the 
Spirit of Truth, shall lead us into all truth, and 
reveal to us a knowledge of the truth as it is in 
Christ Jesus. But the mind must first be divested 
of preconceived and erroneous opinions. God 
will not reveal to any man a knowledge of his 
Holy Word, while he seeks to confirm from it 
the dogmas of men. These must be laid aside, 
and truth alone must be taught for the truth's 
sake. 



Preface, vii 

Then the promise of our Lord shall be verified, 
" And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall 
make you free.'* When we are willing to follow 
where the Lord leads, to receive what He gives, 
to accept what He teaches, and fearlessly to pro- 
claim what He unfolds to our comprehension, 
then are we his servants indeed, and then are we 
free indeed, and in bondage to no man and no 
body of men. 

Of course, it requires a struggle to divest the 
mind of the influences of early training, and the 
habits and modes of thought that have shaped and 
moulded our religious development. But wdien 
the Master's voice is unmistakably heard, bidding 
us come and learn of Him, and we confer not 
with flesh and blood, the yoke becomes easy and 
the burden light. Then for the first time we 
learn to love truth for its own sake. It becomes 
sweet to our taste, and more precious than rubies 
in pur experience. The Lord opens our spiritual 
eyes, and we discern clearly the deep and hidden 
things of the Spirit. He opens to our view the 
internal sense of the Word. We thus learn what 
He means when He says : " It is the Spirit that 
quickeneth ; the flesh profiteth nothing : the words 



viii Preface. 

that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they 
are life." (John vi. 63.) 

Under the Lord's teaching, the Bible becomes 
an unsealed Book, whose open pages we read with 
ever-increasing delight. Its hitherto dry and un- 
interesting portions become pregnant with mean- 
ing, and meaning of deep and absorbing interest. 
Beneath type, and symbol, and metaphor, and 
allegory, and parable, we behold the Lord in his 
Divine glory, and his Church adorned like a bride 
for her husband. 

It is unquestionably the right of every one to 
investigate truth for himself; and it is not only 
the privilege but the imperative duty of ministers 
of the Gospel and students for the ministry, to 
bring their respective creeds to the light of the 
Word for comparison, not to confirm error as 
truth, but io detect error if any exist, and put it 
away. 

The various orthodox creeds were formulated 
many years ago, when the light of science and 
of Revelation shone much more dimly than at 
the present day. Besides, men in those days 
were no more commissioned of God to publish 
authoritative standards of religious belief, than 



Preface. ix 

are the men of the Church in this age of the 
world. 

Every minister, and every student preparing 
for the ministry, should boldly assert his right to 
test every system of doctrine by the Word, the 
only Divine standard, and the only rightful 
authority over the conscience. Neither self-in- 
terest nor worldly policy should deter them from 
putting the creeds of men into the Divine crucible. 

Of course, those who love the praise of men 
more than the praise of God, will not do this ; but 
the true servants of God should seek above all 
things to honor Him by understanding and doing 
what his Word teaches. They can honor Him in 
no other way. And He says : " Them that honor 
me, I will honor." No fear of ostracism, perse- 
cution, or disfellowship should have the weight 
of a feather in determining their course. We are 
to seek to please the Lord, not men ; for if we 
seek to please men, we shall not be the servants 
of Christ. 

The Lord is greater than man, and Truth is 
greater than any man-made creed. Ministers, I 
know, are expected to teach the dogmas of the 
creed, and to confine their preaching within its 



x Preface. 

limits, or withdraw from the people with whom 
they have been affiliated. But they should do 
neither, unless the Lord by his providence so 
orders. They should keep right on preaching 
the truth more and more faithfully as the Lord 
reveals it to them, and their people are able to 
receive it. If, in answer to earnest prayer and 
long-continued seeking, the Holy Spirit imparts 
to them clearer light, purer love, and a deeper 
insight into the precious things of the kingdom, 
what must be done? A perversion of spiritual 
truth thus revealed by the Lord, would be blas- 
phemy against the Holy Ghost. Silence, when 
the Lord bids us speak, would be scarcely less 
blamable. It would be to smother our convic- 
tions, disregard the Lord's teachings, and do 
despite to the spirit of grace. Is it a question 
whether ministers should obey God or men? 
Whether they should follow the higher law of 
the spirit of life in Christ Jesus as of supreme 
authority, or quietly ignore that law that they 
may keep their own traditions, and obey the 
doctrines and commandments of men ? In the 
one case the authority of the creed is honored, 
while God is dishonored and his Word made null 



Preface. xi 

and void. In the other the absolute authority of 
the Word is recognized, and the Lord is glorified 
by implicit obedience on the part of his ministers, 
who clearly know that no man and no body of 
men have the right to fetter the souls and bind 
the consciences of God's embassadors with mere 
human decrees or regulations. The Lord himself 
declares that we worship Him in vain when we 
teach for doctrines the commandments of men. 

The following discourses are the result of break- 
ing loose from ecclesiastical bondage, and following 
the guidance of the Lord in the investigation of 
truth. They are heartily indorsed by a large 
majority of the Church to which the author 
ministers. He bespeaks for them a careful and , 
candid perusal, with the mind divested as far as 
possible of all prejudice and preconceived opinions. 

They are not put forth as an exhaustive argu- 
ment, but as suggesting thought outside of the 
usual channels. The author has been greatly 
helped to a clearer understanding of the Bible 
in its teachings, by a study of the writings of 
Emanuel Swedenborg, Clowes, Giles, Barrett, 
Noble, Madeley, Bayley, Horace Bushnell, E. H. 



xii Preface. 

Sears, and others, — among whom may be men- 
tioned Doughty, Mercer, Farnsworth, and T. S. 
Arthur. For many years he was blinded by a 
deep-seated prejudice against Svvedenborg and his 
teachings. He judged and condemned them with- 
out a hearing. He utterly refused to investigate 
their claims, or even to give them a respectful 
consideration. Finally God took away the preju- 
dice; and never has any other writer so com- 
pletely lifted the veil that obscured the ineffable 
glory of the Word. God be praised for the 
revealed Science of Correspondences, by which the 
true meaning of the Word — even its spiritual and 
celestial sense — is made known. It is impossible 
to describe the joy, and peace, and abiding satis- 
faction, and holy pleasure, and clear understand- 
ing with which the Sacred Scriptures are now 
contemplated. That similar rich showers of bless- 
ing may descend upon all who will candidly and 
prayerfully read the following discourses, is the 
author's devout and earnest prayer. 

K F. R. 
Sax Jose, Cal., Jan. 1st, 1886. 



— &=£& ~§^«- 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. — The Doctrine of Three Persons in the 
Godhead Contrary to Reason and Rev- 
elation 15 

II. — The Atonement of Christ in no Sense 

"Vicarious." 38 

III. — The Ascension and Mediation of Christ. 63 

IV. — Death and Resurrection 83 

V. — The Second Coming of Christ 103 

VI.— The Judgment Day 121 

VII. — Love to God and Charity Toward the 
Neighbor, the Prime Essentials of 

Christianity 137 

VIII.— What is "Evangelical Religion"? 153 

IX. — Keeping the Commandments 169 

ADDENDUM 179 

xiii 



Progressive Thought 

on 
GREAT SUBJECTS. 



I. 



THE DOCTRINE OF THREE PERSONS IN THE 
GODHEAD CONTRARY TO REASON AND REV- 
ELATION 

SCHOOLED in the commonly received doc- 
trines of " orthodox " religion formulated 
into mere human creeds, and published as the 
authorized standards of religious belief, I ac- 
cepted them without question, — even as the ora- 
cles of God. For years I preached the gospel 
according to those standards. It never occurred 
to me in the earlier years of my ministry that the 
creed of my Church was not the truth precisely 
as taught in the Sacred Scriptures., I had in- 
herited all my religious ideas, which were accepted 
implicitly with the utmost credulity ; and those 
to whom I ministered received my preaching in 
15 



16 Progressive Thought. 

the same unquestioning manner. At length I 
was led to study the Word without the aid 
of " commentaries," " expository notes/' " pulpit 
helps," or " theological tenets." I wanted to know 
the Truth, and I sought it in the Word alone. 
Divesting my mind as much as possible of all 
preconceived notions and theories, I gave my 
heart to the Lord, and invoked his Holy Spirit 
to " open my eyes that I might behold wondrous 
things out of his law." And most graciously did 
He vouchsafe his Divine illumination. 

The foundation of all religion, the doctrine 
concerning God, claimed the first consideration. 
The popular theory of the Trinity was contrasted 
with the plain teaching of the Word. I did not 
expect to find any want of agreement. I had 
always supposed the creed of my Church and 
the Truth were " one and inseparable." Hence 
I expected to confirm my faith in the dogmas of 
my Church, by acquainting myself with the state- 
ments of the Word of God. 

I had learned from the accepted standards of 
doctrine that there were three separate and dis- 
tinct Persons in the Godhead — the Father, the 
Son, and the Holy Ghost ; that each Person was 
very and truly God, possessed of every Divine 
perfection, infinite, uncreated, and eternal. And 
yet I was taught that there was only one God, 
whose name was Jehovah, end that these three 



The Divine Trinity. 17 

infinite and almighty Persons, each of whom was 
God, constituted that one God. I said to myself, 
"How can these things be?" How can three 
separate and distinct Persons constitute one God? 
The Father as the infinite, eternal, and almighty 
Jehovah, fills immensity. How, then, can there 
be room for two other infinite, eternal, and al- 
mighty Beings, each one of whom also fills im- 
mensity? And if each of these three Persons is 
really and truly God, how is it that you do not 
have three Gods? Or how, consistently with 
sober reason, can you say they are one God ? If 
the Three are one in essence, without body or 
parts, then what are they as to their Personal- 
ities? In the one case, you have an impersonal 
Deity, which destroys the Divine Personality 
altogether. In the other, you have three dis- 
tinct and separate Persons, each of whom is 
God ; hence, three Gods. 

Logically, there is no escape from this con- 
clusion. As far as possible, the question is evaded, 
and the inquirer is put off by one pretext or 
another ; but when this is no longer possible, the 
whole subject of the Trinity is remanded to the 
realm of impenetrable mystery, into which the 
finite mind should not seek to enter. 

But this does not satisfy. There is neither 
wisdom nor knowledge exhibited by religious 
teachers who thus deal with those that come to 
2 



]8 Progressive Thought 

thera for instruction. The investigation of old 
dogmas cannot be put off in this manner. 

It is impossible to conceive of an impersonal 
God, without body or parts, having no form or 
substance. There is no difficulty in comprehend- 
ing the revelation of Jesus Christ as " God mani- 
fest in the flesh." We can draw near intelligently, 
and communicate with Him as friend with friend. 
But in what form is the Father? and in what 
shape is the Holy Spirit ? They are declared in 
the creeds of men to be separate and distinct 
Persons, and hence must have separate and dis- 
tinct forms distinguishable from that of Jesus 
Christ. He is in fashion and form a man, because 
He assumed our humanity, and appeared in the 
material world as a man. And when He glorified 
that human and made it Divine, He still pre- 
served the human form. 

Many admit the existence of a great First 
Cause operating in the construction of the uni- 
verse, but they give that Cause no form or per- 
sonality. But it is absurd to suppose the existence 
of an almighty Being, of infinite wisdom and 
knowledge, without form or substance by which 
He could be distinguished from the various ele- 
ments of the universe which He has produced, 
and every part of which He certainly fills with 
his creative energy. Force is one thing, but the 



The Divine Trinity. 19 

Intelligence that produces and operates that force, 
is another. 

Electricity, light, and heat are called " forces 
of nature/' and, operating according to " natural 
laws," certain effects are produced. But it would 
be preposterous to suppose that those forces of 
nature, operating by means of natural laws, are 
themselves invested with intelligence and wisdom. 
They were powerless to build the world, or con- 
struct the universe, or exhibit design, or show the 
relation of means to ends, or cause to effect. The 
infinite Designer, who is Himself the Creator of 
these forces of nature, employs them as his agents, 
operating in the natural or material world ; and 
He has endowed man with a sufficient degree of 
wisdom and understanding by which he may com- 
prehend the existence of these forces, and the laws 
by which they operate, so as to make them sub- 
serve the general good of mankind. 

Now, if God be without form or personality, 
then He cannot be separate and distinct from these 
" natural laws " and " second causes ; " hence, 
they are themselves God, or " modes " of the 
Divine existence. And if so, matter is eternal, 
and man is, as the Pantheistic school of philosophy 
declares, the highest mode or manifestation of 
God. Now, upon the one hand you have the 
philosophy of Pantheism, which denies the per- 
sonality of God, while upon the other you have 



20 Progressive Thought. 

the popular theology which teaches tripersonality 
of God. The one is Pantheism; the other is 
Polytheism. Between these two extremes of 
Polytheism, with its three personal Gods, and 
Pantheism which declares that there is no per- 
sonal God, lies the truth as to the existence and 
personality of God. We learn that truth solely 
from the Word. 

Upon the hypothesis either of Polytheism or 
Tri theism, and Pantheism, no man can under- 
standing^ worship God. We must throw intelli- 
gence and reason to the winds, and ignorantly 
worship with the ancient Athenians we know not 
what ; and with them rear altars inscribed " to the 
unknown God ; " or, we must accept the revelation 
of Jesus Christ as Jehovah God of the Old Testa- 
ment, as " God manifest in the flesh " in the New 
Testament, and as the only God of heaven and 
earth. 

At this point in my investigation, I bade the 
commandments, traditions, and councils of men 
an everlasting farewell ; and took the Word of 
God, and his Word only, and the holy spirit of 
truth as my Teacher and Guide, that under his 
Divine enlightenment I might enjoy the freedom 
which the knowledge of the truth imparts. For 
our Lord says, "And ye shall know the truth, 
and the truth shall make you free. ,, (John viii. 32.) 
And, " if the Son, therefore, shall make you free, 



The Divine Trinity. 21 

ye shall be free indeed." (ver. 36.) " Howbeit, 
when He, the spirit of truth, is come, He will guide 
you into all truth." (John xvi. 13.) 

I realized that I could not have these Divine 
promises fulfilled in my own experience while my 
mind was filled with preconceived notions, and 
while I was blindly following the counsels and 
traditions of men, without any thought of keep- 
ing the commandments of God, or of putting 
myself in the way to receive his divine illumina- 
tion. And I am perfectly satisfied that, if we 
sought wisdom and knowledge of God more, and 
of men less, we should have a clearer understand- 
ing of truth, and a deeper experience of its 
cleansing and regenerating power. 

When I came to search the Scriptures with a 
single desire to know the truth for its own sake, 
and with a mind divested as far as possible of all 
notions and opinions, I utterly failed to find any- 
where taught the doctrine of three Persons in the 
Godhead. That the Father is one Person, the 
Son another Person, and the Holy Spirit another, 
is a statement not found in the Bible. God being 
revealed as a Trinity in unity, under the name of 
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, theologians have 
assumed that there must of necessity be a trinity 
of Persons. But it is an assumption merely, and 
nothing more. It is opposed both to reason and 
to Revelation. 



22 Progressive Thought. 

The uniform and harmonious teaching of the 
Scriptures is unmistakably against the popular 
idea of the Trinity ; and it is astonishing beyond 
measure that those who profess to be guided solely 
by the Word, should persist in confirming them- 
selves in such a falsity. It only illustrates the 
tremendous power of human tradition and early 
training. 

But I would invite the candid reader to accom- 
pany me through the sacred pages in quest of 
testimony concerning the unity of God. It is 
everywhere taught in Moses, the Psalms, and in 
all the Prophets. " Hear, O Israel : The Lord 
our God is one Lord. And thou shalt love the 
Lord thy God with all thy heart, .and with all thy 
soul, and with all thy might." (Deut. vi. 4, 5.) 
"Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever; the 
sceptre of thy kingdom is a right sceptre. ,, (Ps. xlv. 
6.) In Hebrews (i. 8) this language is applied 
to Christ. "Thus saith the Lord, the King of 
Israel, and his Redeemer the Lord of Hosts : I am 
the First and the Last, and besides me there is no 
God. Is there a God besides me ? Yea, there is 
no God ; I know not any." (Isa. xliv. 6, 7.) Now, 
if there was, or was to be, another God, or al- 
mighty Being, equal in every Divine perfection 
with Jehovah God, the inspirer of the above lan- 
guage, He, certainly, as the omniscient One would 



The Divine Trinity. 23 

have known it. But He declares there is no other 
God. 

In Rev. i. 8 and xxii. 13, the same language is 
uttered by our Lord concerning Himself, showing 
most conclusively that Jehovah God who revealed 
Himself to Moses and the Prophets was identical 
with the Lord Jesus Christ, who was " God mani- 
fest in the flesh," and " in whom dwelt all the 
fullness of the Godhead bodily," and who was 
declared by the apostle to be " the true God and 
Eternal Life." Jesus says, " I am Alpha and 
Omega, the Beginning and the Ending, saith the 
Lord, who is, and who was, and who is to come, 
the Almighty." (Rev. i. 8.) " For unto us a child 
is born ; unto us a Son is given ; and the govern- 
ment shall be upon his shoulder ; and his name 
shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the mighty 
God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace." 
(Isa. ix. 6.) Who in all Christendom does not 
know that this prophecy refers solely to the child 
born of the virgin Mary ? Yet He is called the 
mighty God and the everlasting Father. Hence 
Jesus says concerning Himself, " If ye had known 
me, ye should have known my Father also. And 
from henceforth ye know Him, and have seen 
Him. Philip saith unto Him, Lord, show us the 
Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, 
Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast 
thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen 



24 Progressive Thought. 

me, hath seen the Father : And how sayest thou 
then, Show us the Father? " (John xiv. 7-9.) 

Certainly no language can be more explicit, 
and no instruction more convincing, than the 
above words uttered by our Lord himself. He 
leaves no room to suppose that there exists any- 
where in all the universe any mighty God or 
everlasting Father distinct and separate from 
Himself. He says, " Believe me, that I am in the 
Father and the Father in me." (John xiv. 11.) 
Now, if we believe that the Father is a separate 
Person from Jesus Christ, then we do not believe 
his w T ord. For He declares in the most positive 
manner that the Father is in Himself, and not 
out of or separate from Himself. It is impossible 
for God to lie ; and yet Jesus whom the triper- 
sonalists believe to be God, did lie, if the doctrine 
of tripersonalism is true. If Christ's Word is 
true, the dogmas of men concerning God are not 
true. And if they are true, the statement of our 
Lord is false. Let the reader choose between 
these conflicting authorities ; and it will not take 
those long to. decide, with whom the Word of God 
is supreme. 

Again : " In the beginning was the Word, and 
the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 
And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among 
us." (John i. 1, 14.) Again we read: "And the 
Lord shall be King over all the earth ; in that day 



The Divine Trinity. 25 

shall there be one Lord, and his name one." 
(Zech. xiv. 8.) Thus we find the unity of God 
taught everywhere in the Holy Word ; and we 
find also that the Lord God of Israel, revealed in 
the Old Testament as the only God, the Maker of 
heaven and earth, and the Creator of all things, 
was also declared to be the Saviour, and the only 
Saviour and Redeemer, who would, in the fullness 
of time, come into the world to save his people 
from their sins. And when He came, it was, " In 
the brightness of the Father's glory, and the ex- 
press image of his Person." (Heb. i. 3.) " Before 
me there w r as no God formed ; neither shall there 
be after me ; I, even I, am Jehovah, and beside 
me there is no Saviour." (Isa. x. 11.) " Verily 
thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Is- 
rael the Saviour." (Isa. xlv. 15.) "But Israel 
shall be saved in the Lord with an everlasting 
salvation; for thus saith the Lord that created 
the heavens, God himself that formed the earth, 
and made it ; He hath established it ; He created 
it not in vain ; He formed it to be inhabited ; I 
am the Lord, and there is none else ; and there is 
no God else beside me ; a just God, and a Saviour, 
there is none beside me." "Look unto me and 
be ye saved all the ends of the earth ; for I am 
God, and there is none else." (Isa. xlv. 17-22.) 

How grand and glorious these revelations of 
Jehovah God, the world's Creator and the world's 



26 Progressive Thought 

Saviour and Redeemer! Who cannot see that 
whether as Creator, Saviour, or Redeemer, the 
one God is always spoken of in such a manner as 
to leave no possible ground to infer a plurality of 
Persons ? " For thus saith the Lord God : Be- 
hold I, even I, will both search my sheep and 
seek them out. ... So will I seek out my sheep, 
and will deliver them out of all places where they 
have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day." 
(Ez. xxxiv. 11, 12.) Here God is revealed as a 
shepherd seeking out and leading his sheep ; and 
in the Gospel of John, our Lord Jesus Christ is 
presented in the same character, " calling his own 
sheep by name and leading them out," as "the 
Good Shepherd that giveth his life for the sheep." 
Jehovah God the Shepherd of Israel, and the 
Lord Jesus Christ the Shepherd of his spiritual 
sheep, are one and the same Divine Being. " My 
people hath been lost sheep," etc. (Jer. 1. 6.) 

Compare the above with John x. 8, and you 
will see the God of Israel and Jesus the Good 
Shepherd to be the same. " Yet I am the Lord 
thy God from the land of Egypt, and thou shalt 
know no God but me: for there is no Saviour 
beside me." (Hosea xiii. 4.) As there is no God 
save the Lord, so there is no Saviour beside the 
one God. The God of the Prophets and the 
Lord of the Gospels are one and the same Divine 
Jehovah. 



The Divine Trinity. 27 

The name of the Lord Jesus Christ, is the 
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. In that 
name the Apostles were commanded to baptize, 
and in obedience to that command, they went and 
baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus : showing 
conclusively that they did not understand the 
Divine Trinity to be a trinity of Persons. Is it 
not astonishing beyond measure that a vast system 
of irrational and contradictory theology should 
have been built on such an assumption ? For the 
entire system of orthodox religion among all the 
so-called evangelical sects in Christendom, rests 
solely upon the theory that there are three sepa- 
rate, distinct, infinite, eternal, and uncreated Per- 
sons in the Godhead. They are declared to be 
equal in every divine perfection ; and yet the 
Father is represented as a Being of infinite wrath 
and vengeance, and as determined to turn the 
whole w T orld of mankind, his helpless creatures, 
into the everlasting torments of hell, because Adam 
and Eve, in disobedience to an arbitrary com- 
mand, ate some material fruit from a certain tree 
in the garden of Eden, which is understood to 
have been a natural locality. Before a human 
tribunal, Adam and Eve could not have been 
convicted even of petty larceny ; and yet the 
creeds of men have made the act of such a heinous 
nature, as to involve the countless millions of 
earth in eternal ruin and everlasting torment. 



28 Progressive Thought. 

Not one jot or tittle of mercy will God the Father 
show to any soul of man until He has been paid, 
in suffering, to the uttermost farthing, either in the 
eternal damnation of a world, or the wreaking of 
his vengeance upon the head of his own innocent 
Son. His sense of justice must have satisfaction, 
and that satisfaction consists in the infliction of 
his w r rath to the uttermost upon the innocent 
instead of the guilty. But who satisfies the Son's 
justice? He is admitted to be God, and equal 
with the Father in every Divine perfection ; and 
yet there is nothing said about the wrath and 
vengeance and violated law of the Son. Upon 
whom did He pour the vials of his wrath ? He 
had no wrath, no vengeance, no purpose to destroy 
mankind, do you say ? Then He was not like the 
Father, either in nature, disposition, or act. 

Indeed, according to the popular theory, fhe 
Father and Son would not be taken to be related 
to each other in any sense. One is lovely, the 
other unlovely. One is all wrath and vengeance, 
the other is all love and mercy. One damns, and 
the other saves. One inflicts infinite suffering upon 
the innocent, the other extends pity and compas- 
sion to the guilty, and even prays for his enemies 
and murderers. From this contrast of character, 
the idea that the Father and Son are just alike as 
distinct Persons, possessing equally the same divine 
perfections, is seen to be absurd. And how can 



The Divine Triniti/. 29 

two Beings so dissimilar be said to be one in any 
sense ? And what would you think of an earthly 
parent who would compel a disobedient child to 
walk ten rods on burning coals of fire ? Or what 
would you think of a man who would cause his 
only son to be subjected to the tortures of a lin- 
gering death, though innocent of any misde- 
meanor, to satiate his wrath toward his enemies 
who had trespassed on his premises? In either 
case you would not think such monsters of cruelty 
and injustice fit to live anywhere on this green 
earth. Yet these creeds of men have made God, 
the Father, infinitely more monstrous, cruel, and 
unjust than either character supposed, in that He 
will be satisfied with nothing less than the eternal 
damnation of mankind, or the murder of his own 
innocent Son at the hands of wicked men. 

And if the literal interpretation of the Garden 
of Eden is correct, and that narrative in Genesis 
is to be taken as a statement of historical fact, 
then I do not hesitate to say that God purposely 
lured an inexperienced couple to their ruin, by 
laying a snare to entrap their unwary feet. He 
did this, knowing full well what the result would 
be — the introduction of sin and death into the 
world — Himself foreordaining from eternity that 
his own Son, the second Person in the Trinity, 
should take the sinner's place, be made a sub- 
stitute in his stead, and suffer the infliction of 



30 Progressive Thought. 

all the vindictive wrath due to all the multiplied 
transgressions of earth's uncounted millions to the 
end of time. 

Thus, in the execution of this plan, Christ, 
though innocent, was subjected to a punishment as 
unrelenting and terrible as though He were guilty 
of all the sins and crimes ever committed under 
the sun. And the guilty, hell-deserving violators 
of his law, by simply believing that Christ became 
their substitute and paid their debt, go free, receive 
absolute justification, and are accounted righteous, 
though not so in themselves, but because the right- 
eousness of Christ is placed to their credit. And 
all this to placate the Divine vengeance and sat- 
isfy the Divine justice. But where is the justice 
in punishing the innocent or clearing the guilty? 
And if Christ paid the debt incurred by man's 
transgression, and purchased his release from con- 
demnation, where is there any exhibition of mercy 
in man's salvation ? 

You undertake to prosecute a man for debt, and 
a friend of his steps in and pays your claim in 
full, and settles the account. Is it any mercy 
shown him on your part, that you withdraw the 
suit and let the man go free ? Not in the least. 
He is free by another's favor, and not on account 
of any mercy you have shown him. So, if Christ 
paid the penalty of man's sins, and Divine justice 
accepted the payment as a full equivalent, then 



The Divine Trinity. 31 

man has a right to heaven, and it is no mercy on 
God's part that he goes there. He enters heaven 
through Christ's favor, and not by the Father's 
mercy. It is declared in the Sacred Scripture?, 
over and over again, that " God is Love ; " and 
yet I cannot conceive of any doctrine more at 
variance with such a character, than that which 
clothes the Father, as the first Person in the Trinity, 
with vengeance and wrath, and as giving such an 
exhibition of vindictive cruelty and injustice as 
we should hardly expect to encounter in the most 
brutal and savage type of humanity. My inmost 
soul cries out against such a shocking idea of God. 
It is not true. It is a libel on the character of 
Jehovah. It is a false view of the doctrine of the 
Trinity. It is a groundless assumption, and as 
wicked as it is groundless. I tell you the great 
Babylon of false theological systems built upon 
it, is bound to be overthrown. It cannot stand. 
Whatever is not of the Truth, must come to 
naught. 

You may throw around the Laodicean Church 
of this age the glamour of external splendor, but 
spiritual poverty, wretchedness, nakedness and 
blindness lie concealed within. " Because thou 
sayest I am rich and increased w 7 ith goods, and' 
have need of nothing, and knowest not that thou 
art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, 
and naked." (Rev. iii. 17.) The whole system 



32 Progressive Thought. 

is represented as being spewed out of the Lord's 
mouth. The time has come when men are to be 
instructed plainly of the Father ; when they are to 
recognize the Unity of God in Trinity, and the 
Trinity in Unity ;. and when they are to w T orship 
the Lord Jesus Christ as the one only God of 
heaven and earth. The conflicting theories of 
men have lost their power, and must give place 
to the harmonious revelation of the one God and 
only Saviour Jesus Christ. Selfhood must be 
dethroned, and all self-seeking be forever cast out. 
All ecclesiasticisms, hierarchies, councils, synods, 
presbyteries, legislative assemblies of the church, 
popes, cardinals, bishops, and clerical orders must 
bow to the Divine mandate, and be remanded to 
the shades of the past. With the true knowledge 
of the unity of God restored, the unity of faith 
will follow, and thence the unity of the Lord's 
Church on earth. The destruction of the Unity 
of God by the doctrine of the three Persons in 
the Godhead, is the root of all the conflicting 
dogmas, theories and notions of men, the prolific 
source of the multiplied factions into which Chris- 
tendom has been divided, and by which Christians 
have been set one against the other in hot dispute, bit- 
ter persecution, and fratricidal strife ; constituting, 
for more than a thousand years of the Christian era, 
one of the darkest, bloodiest, and most revolting 
periods of the world's history. The harvest has 



The Divine Trinity. 33 

been according to the seed sown. Under the res- 
toration of the true doctrine concerning God, the 
scattered remnants of the Lord's church will be 
gathered and unified, and "then will all men see 
what is the fellowship of the mystery which from 
the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, 
who created all things by Jesus Christ, in whom 
are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, 
and in whom dwells all the fullness of the God- 
head bodily." 

In the Revelation (chap, i.), Jesus Christ is de- 
clared to be the Almighty ; and hence the ever- 
lasting Father dwells in Him, and not out of or 
separate from Him. God as to his supreme Di- 
vinity, is the Father ; as to his Humanity, the 
Son ; and as to the Divine operation proceeding 
from this conjunction, the Holy Spirit. Hence 
the Trinity consists of the three essentials of one 
God ; and these three are one God in essence and 
in form. From this it follows that Jesus as to his 
Humanity was the Son of God, because God was 
his Father ; and He dwells in that Humanity as 
the soul in the body, and not separate from it. 
" In man, who was created in the image of God, a 
trinity exists, as soul, body, and operation. Now, 
suppose you substitute a trinity of persons in man. 
The soul is the first person ; the body is the second 
person ; .and the operation is the third person ; and 
these three persons are one man." Any one can 
3 



34 Progressive Thought. 

see that such a supposition would be absurd. And 
yet the idea is not more contrary to reason and 
sound sense, than that there are three separate 
Persons in the Divine Trinity, and that those three 
Persons make one God. Jesus came and spake 
unto them, saying, "All power is given unto me in 
heaven and in earth." (Matt, xxviii. 18.) Now, 
upon the hypothesis that the Father was a distinct 
Person separate from Jesus Christ, and that He 
had transferred all power in heaven and earth to 
his Son, what element of power did the Father 
have left? None at all. And a being who is 
powerless, is finite, and not God in any sense. How 
can you pray to a God who has no power to do 
you the good you need? You might as well call 
upon dumb idols to help you in your extremities. 
And if Christ as the Son is God — as the advocates 
of the popular theology admit — He is infinite, eter- 
nal, and omnipotent ; how, then, could any power 
be given to Him ? How could He receive any 
portion of that which He possessed in its absolute 
fullness from eternity? Ask any exponent of or- 
thodoxy to explain how this is, or how it can be, 
and he will tell you it is one of the great mysteries 
of Godliness, which you are not to pry into. One 
does not need any clearer evidence that the com- 
mon idea of the Trinity is a perversion of the 
truth, and hence not in any sense a doctrine of 
Revelation, than the fact that its advocates can 



The Divine Trinity. 35 

give no intelligent and rational elucidation of it, 
only that it is a mystery, and something to be be- 
lieved, but which can neither be explained nor 
understood. It must be believed as one of the 
cardinal doctrines of the church, however much 
reason and common sense may be stultified by the 
credulity. 

Such a faith is both blind and dead. It may 
seem to live, but is dead while it liveth. It clings 
to a mere man-made dogma with the grip of death. 
There is in it no knowledge or light of truth, and 
hence no life. And when the soul is in darkness 
concerning the central sun of Christian doctrine, 
how can it be otherwise than in obscurity as to 
the other doctrines of the Word ? "As the less is 
always included in the greater/' so in the light of 
the true knowledge of God, we see clearly how to 
come to the knowledge of all other truths. Truth 
is always in harmony and never in conflict with 
itself. Truth is light, and in it there is no dark- 
ness at all. Therefore, any doctrine which cannot 
be seen in the light of truth to be true, is never in 
harmony with sober reason or intelligence ; and 
men outrage both when they receive it as a doc- 
trine of the Lord. 

Now, in the examination of this subject, I am 
deeply impressed with the conviction, that either 
the Lord Jesus Christ, as the Father, the Son, and 
the Holy Spirit, is the only God of the universe, 



36 Progressive Thought 

Creator, Preserver, and Redeemer, or there is no , 
revelation of the existence of any God whatever. 
Between the one personal God revealed in the 
Scriptures as the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Pan- 
theistic philosophy which declares that a personal 
God has no existence anywhere, I see no middle 
ground. Hence (as at variance with both reason 
and Revelation) I reject the popular doctrine of 
the tripersonality of God, as a doctrine of poly- 
theism based on false assumptions and productive 
of terribly mischievous consequences, from which 
we should all pray to be delivered. 

And yet for years prejudice blinded my eyes, 
perverted my judgment, darkened my understand- 
ing, stultified my reason, and bound me as in 
fetters of iron. Bondage was liberty ; servitude 
to the dogmas of the creed was freedom. " Igno- 
rance was bliss," and enlightenment the harbinger 
of trouble and sorrow. We often reach the dawn, 
and hail the light of a glorious morning laden 
with the sweet perfume of a thousand flowers, and 
melodious with the song of birds, through a long 
and dreary night of fearful storms and threatening 
dangers. How delightfully pleasant a thing it is 
for the eyes to behold the sun after such a night ! 
So, when divine love and light from the Lord 
who is our Sun, flood our souls with hallowed radi- 
ance, how sweetly precious the experience of new- 
born freedom in the knowledge of truth ;, pure, 



The Divine Trinity, 37 

essential, eternal Truth, which is God himself 
manifested unto us in the Man, Christ Jesus, " in 
whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bod- 
ily ; " " The Alpha and Omega, the Beginning 
and the End; who was, and who is, and is to 
come, the Almighty ; " "The great and mighty 
Jehovah ;" "The mighty God, the everlasting 
Father, the Prince of Peace ; " " The true God 
and eternal life." 



*F */wvC 



II. 

THE ATONEMENT OF CHRIST IN NO SENSE 
" VICARIOUS. 1 ' 

j]E endeavored to show in the former discourse, 
both from Reason and Revelation, that there 
was not, and could not be, three distinct and sepa- 
rate Persons in the Godhead ; that the existence 
of one almighty and infinite God, who is omnipo- 
tent, omniscient, and omnipresent, precluded the 
possibility of there being any other almighty and 
infinite God possessing those attributes ; that the 
Jehovah God of the Old Testament was repeatedly 
declared the Saviour and the only Saviour who 
should come into the world to save mankind ; that 
all the prophetic utterances concerning the mighty 
God and the everlasting Father, in his attributes, 
offices, character, and work, were fulfilled in one 
Lord Jesus Christ ; in short, that God and Christ 
are one and the same Person. 

This being true, of course the Incarnation and 
Atonement of Christ assume a widely different 
aspect, and sustain a vastly changed relation to 
the whole subject under consideration, from the 
commonly received view. It was not the second 
Person in the Godhead who became incarnate, but 
38 



The Atonement. 39 

Jehovah God himself. " God was manifest in the 
flesh." " The child born, and the Son given, was 
the mighty God, the everlasting Father, and the 
Prince of Peace." (Isa. ix. 6.) " In the begin- 
ning was the Word, and the Word was with God, 
and the Word was God. And the Word was made 
flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth." 
(John i. 1-18.) The Apostle declares that " This 
is the true God and eternal life." (1 John v. 20.) 
Jesus says (Rev. i. 8), " I am Alpha and Omega, 
the Beginning and the Ending, saith the Lord, 
w r hich is, and w T hich was, and which is to come, the 
Almighty." "And He said unto me, It is done. I 
am Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End. 
. . . And I will be his God, and He shall be my 
Son." (Ibid. xxi. 6, 7.) 

Man had lost the knowledge of God. It w T as 
not possible for him to approach God, and it w T as 
equally impossible for Jehovah to draw near to 
man without consuming him by the brightness of 
his ineffable glory. We are not to understand 
that God had in w T rath turned away from man, but 
that man had, in his blind infatuation, forsaken 
God. His whole spiritual organism had become 
deranged. He could neither see with his eyes, nor 
hear with his ears, nor understand with his heart. 
He had become "dead in trespasses and sins." His 
spiritual life had become palsied. His light had 
become darkness, and he " loved darkness rather 



40 Progressive Thought, 

than light, because his deeds were evil." Sin had 
corrupted his affections, and his wisdom had be- 
come folly, and his " righteousness as filthy rags." 
He was vainly striving to find life in death, light 
in darkness, liberty in bondage, truth in error, 
good in evil, happiness in philosophies, and heaven 
on the plane of the earthly life. No longer con- 
trolled by the nobler spiritual faculties of the 
mind, man became the willing slave of bis bodily 
senses, which addressed themselves solely to mate- 
rial things. He had mistaken the shadow for the 
substance, the external appearances for the inter- 
nal realities of spiritual existence. He dwelt in 
the region and shadow of death. Eternal things 
were lost to view. The bright effulgence of ever- 
lasting life was obscured by the darkness of igno- 
rance, the long night of sin, and the gathering 
shadows of the cheerless tomb. 

God had in numberless ways tried to win man 
to Himself, but in vain. He had called to him to 
turn and live ; but he closed his ears against the 
call, and refused to hear. Every offer of mercy 
had been disregarded. The Divine counsels had 
been set at naught. God's messages of love had 
been treated with contempt, and his prophets had 
been persecuted and slain. Sin in all its forms 
held high carnival, and all the hells were ready to 
celebrate their triumph in the everlasting destruc- 
tion of the human race. The fullness of time had 



The Atonement. 41 

come. The church of the holy prophets was con- 
summated. It had come to its end. The knowl- 
edge of truth was lost. The heavens were dark- 
ened, and their rejoicing light no longer shone on 
the pathway of man. 

In this period of impenetrable darkness, at the 
point of man's deepest degradation, and at the time 
of the profoundest ignorance of spiritual truth, 
our Lord Jesus Christ appeared as Jehovah, God 
manifest in the flesh. He appeared to put away 
sin by the sacrifice of Himself. He brought life 
and immortality to light by the Gospel. He 
assumed our human nature with all its infirmi- 
ties, weaknesses, susceptibilities to temptation, and 
with all its exposures to hell's malignity, and every 
form of satanic intrigue ; and in that assumed 
humanity He fought against and conquered all 
the enemies of man, " preaching deliverance to the 
captives, and the recovering of sight to those that 
were blind, proclaiming the acceptable year of the 
Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God.'' 

Christ came to subdue man's enemies, not to pay 
a debt. He came to conquer death and hell, not 
to suffer the vengeance and wrath of the Father. 
He came to fulfill every jot and tittle of the Law, 
not to suffer the penalty of its violation. This 
could not be done, except by the assumption of 
our nature. Hence the necessity of the Incarnation. 
As Jehovah God could not approach man in his 



42 Progressive Thought 

diseased and inverted condition, nor could man 
draw near to God, it was necessary there should 
be an atonement and a Mediator in order that 
man might be saved. But neither an atonement 
nor Mediator was at all necessary in the sense in 
which those terms are commonly employed. The 
whole nature of sacrifice as taught in the Jewish 
economy, and as applied to Christ, is perverted or 
misunderstood. This will manifestly appear as we 
proceed. 

The literal translation of the word rendered 
"atonement," as every scholar knows, is at-one- 
ment— reconciliation. A state or condition of 
being at-one or in agreement with God. Hence, 
when it is said that Christ made an atonement, we 
are not to understand that He made a penal sacri- 
fice of Himself, either to appease the wrath of 
God, satisfy his divine justice, or purchase his 
favor for man. We have a poor estimate of the 
worth or excellence of favors bought for a consid- 
eration, and bestowed upon the same principle, 
even among men in the world. Executive or judi- 
cial clemency purchased with gold or anything 
else, we are accustomed to regard as a corrupt 
bestowment of favor. But what shall we say of 
a clemency which can be moved to compassion 
only by the payment of the full measure of suffer- 
ing either by the transgressor or an innocent sub- 
stitute? We have never admired very much the 



The Atonement. 43 

character of Shylock in his inhuman and persist- 
ent call for the fulfillment of the letter of his 
" bond," demanding from Antonio, the " Merchant 
of Venice," the stipulated u pound of flesh." It 
reveals a character wholly brutalized, without 
human feelings or sympathies. And we instinc- 
tively recoil at the contemplation of a being so 
little like a man, so much like a fiend. But, sup- 
pose Shylock's only son had come forward and 
said : " Father, I will take the merchant's place 
as his substitute. Spare him, and cut thy pound 
of flesh from my breast." And the father had 
answered : " I accept thy offer, son ; and when the 
law of Venice is fulfilled according to the letter 
of my bond, then is the gentile free, and he walks 
out through the blood of my own son to liberty 
and life." And suppose further, that, instead of 
an honorable merchant whom misfortune had over- 
taken, Antonio represented a miserable thief who 
had robbed the Jew of his three thousand ducats, 
you then have an illustration in a most revolting 
and loathsome character, that but faintly pictures 
God, if the common theory of the atonement be 
the correct one. This theory is substantially as 
follows : — 

Man had sinned. He had broken the law of God, 
and by so doing had incurred the displeasure of 
the almighty Father. He must therefore suffer 
the penalty of the law transgressed, which is death 



44 Progressive Thought. 

— eternal death. The whole race of man was in- 
volved in Adam's. transgression, and, without ex- 
ception, must be made to suffer the eternal torments 
of hell-fire, unless a substitute can be found who 
can render an equivalent for man's sins by suffer- 
ing the condemnation of God's violated law in his 
own person, and thus stay or remove the penalty 
of man's transgression. Jesus Christ, the Son of 
God, from eternity the second Person in the Trin- 
ity, offers to become such substitute ; offers to take 
the sinner's place, stand in his stead, and suffer 
the actual infliction of the Father's wrath to the 
uttermost, and thus purchase man's deliverance 
from the penalty of sin. 

The death of Christ in the sinner's stead, as a 
substitute, a penal offering for sin, an atoning 
sacrifice for sin, is the central idea in every ortho- 
dox theory of man's salvation. It is the burden 
in sermon and in song. " Christ died and paid it 
all, yes, all the debt I owe." All that is necessary 
for the sinner to do, is just to believe that Jesus 
has done and paid it all, and accept pardon from 
the Father for the Son's sake, and his eternal sal- 
vation is secured. His eternal salvation is pur- 
chased by the blood of Christ, and all the vilest 
sinner has to do, in order to be saved, is to accept 
the purchased favor. Just believe in Jesus — be- 
lieve just now — and you are pardoned, forgiven, 
and eternally saved. 



The Atonement 45 

Now I submit, in passing, that Christ never once 
presented any such theory, nor did He ever preach 
any such doctrine. In all his teaching there is 
not a word about his taking the sinner's place as a 
substitute, for the purpose of appeasing the wrath 
of God and paying the sinner's debt. Nor is there 
one sentence about any man ever being saved by 
faith alone. Yet the common theory teaches 
Christians everywhere to place their hope, and their 
only hope, in the death of Christ, by which the 
wrath of God has been appeased and Divine jus- 
tice satisfied. They are taught to constantly re- 
mind God that their debt is paid; that they do not 
owe Him anything, since Jesus paid it all. He 
has squared the account in God's ledger, where 
human thoughts, words, and actions are recorded 
— not only all sins committed in the past, but all 
they may commit in time to come — all is settled. 
And, as though God might possibly forget that the 
debt was paid, and exact the penalty the second 
time, Christ is represented as standing before the 
Father, pointing continually to his pierced hands 
and side to remind the Father that He has Him- 
self paid the sinner's debt, and imploring Him to 
be merciful and not demand another settlement. 

Viewing the work of Christ as is commonly 
done, from a business standpoint of debt and 
credit, how utterly unbusiness-like is the whole 
theory ! For, if it is true that Christ paid the 



46 Progressive Thought 

debt justice demanded, and settled man's account 
so that he could be regarded as square on the 
books, how superfluous the office of a Mediator or 
an Advocate or Intercessor before the throne of 
God, to plead for man's acquittal. Logically, you 
are forced to regard God as wholly untrustworthy 
to keep his agreement made with the Son. So full 
of implacable wrath and vengeance, and so greedy 
of inflicting torture and suffering, as to be deter- 
mined to damn those for whom, and in whose stead, 
Christ had already suffered damnation, that He 
must be constantly reminded by a Being as om- 
nipotent as Himself, that He must not demand a 
second payment of the debt, or you must admit 
that the office of Mediator, Advocate, and Inter- 
cessor is entirely superfluous, and therefore noth- 
ing more than a creation of fallible men and a 
play upon words. In the one case you draw the 
character of God as a monster whom no one could 
love or worship ; and in the other you render all 
the Scriptures concerning the mediatorial work of 
Christ, unmeaning and without force. 

If the Father is such a Being as the popular 
theology makes Him ; if He cared more for his 
personal satisfaction in the exercise of his wrath 
than He did either for his own innocent Son or 
the great world of mankind peopled with uncounted 
myriads of his helpless creatures; if He would 
purposely involve the whole race in the ruin of 



The Atonement. 47 

the fall, and consign them all to eternal death 
unless He could visit a like doom upon an innocent 
victim ; if this be the truthful picture of God, 
then I submit that it would be impossible for man 
or angel to really worship or love Him. 

It is not possible to conceive of a more unlovely 
character than is usu ally ascribed to God the Father. 
And yet men will pretend to adore such a charac- 
ter and worship such a God, and at the same time to 
believe that all the heathen nations, and all unbap- 
tized, non-elect infants are consigned to the unend- 
ing torments of hell. Of course, a God who would 
punish his only-begotten Son, when He knew He 
was innocent, as though He were guilty of all the 
crimes of the whole world, would not scruple to 
damn innocent babes for the transgression of their 
parents, or consign to hell the poor ignorant heathen 
for not accepting a salvation which was never of- 
fered them, and for not believing in a Saviour of 
whom they never heard, and of whose existence 
they could have no knowledge. It would seem 
that the monstrous injustice of such an idea would 
only need to be stated, to be at once and forever 
rejected by Christians everywhere. But thousands 
cling to it still. How many in the churches to- 
day are there from a knowledge or love or loving 
practice of the truth, walking, living and abiding 
in the commandments of the Lord ? How few 
love Christ even for what He is in Himself, or 



48 Progressive Thought. 

from any clear, intelligent conception of his char- 
acter or attributes ? People have fled to the church 
as a sort of hiding-place from the vengeance of an 
angry God. They love Christ because they are 
taught that He has paid their debt, and that by 
his intercessions He prevents the Father from 
sending them to hell. Their admiration is based 
not so much upon the character and attributes of 
Him who saves, as upon the fact that, although 
they are sinners, He has provided that they shall 
not be sent to hell at last. To escape perdition 
and gain heaven, and that by the righteousness of 
auother, is the main idea. It is the central motive. 
Sin is dreaded because of its penalty, not because 
it is an offense against God. And when it can be 
made to appear that the penalty has been borne 
by a substitute, then the dread is removed, and the 
sin is indulged without fear of consequences. Not 
that real Christians knowingly sin that grace may 
abound, but the tendency of the doctrine is in that 
direction. There is not much intelligence in such 
worship, and no safety in such a theory. 

Many read the Bible, and pray, and attend 
church, and give alms, only because they are 
afraid an angry God will follow them with ven- 
geance if they do not do these things. They really 
love sin in one form or another, and only fear its 
punishment. " Theologians have confounded the 
penalty of sin with the sin itself, and in so doing 



The Atonement. 49 

have committed a fatal error. There is nothing 
in the Scriptures about Christ saving us from the 
penalty of our sins, except as He saves us from 
our sins. He saves us from our sins, not their 
penalty. There is the same relation between sin 
and its penalty, that there is between disease and 
suffering or pain. Remove the disease and the 
pain ceases. Remove the sin, or, by repentance, 
cease to do evil, and the penalty is removed at 
once." Reformation begins in the will and the 
understanding, and manifests itself in a reformed 
external deportment. It operates from the inter- 
nal outward to the external, and not the reverse. 

Now, we propose to show in what the atonement 
of Christ consists. He assumed our nature, and 
was manifested in the flesh, in a material body like 
our own. There was no other way by which He 
could come to us, so as to save us from our sins. 
" He took not on Him the nature of angels, but 
the seed of Abraham." Hence the nature He as- 
sumed w T as the corrupt nature of mankind. It was 
filled with evil, and with evil tendencies in every 
form. The nature that Christ assumed was our 
nature in its hopeless bondage and captivity to sin, 
and in its close affiliation with hell. In his as- 
sumed nature He bore our sins and sustained our 
sorrows, because He met our enemies and endured 
our temptations. He suffered as we suffer ; wept 
as we weep ; sorrowed as we sorrow ; hungered as 
4 



50 Progressive Thought, 

we hunger ; and wearied as we weary. He was 
overcoming the evils of our nature in the human- 
ity He took upon Himself; and the conflict was 
fearful, and the agony and suffering intense be- 
yond conception, or the power of language to de- 
scribe. "Truly He hath borne our griefs and 
carried our sorrows." 

" Cold mountains and the midnight air 
Witnessed the fervor of his prayer, " 

while the wilderness and the garden bore testi- 
mony to the terrible nature of the conflict. The 
focus of a world's agony centered in Him. He 
was subjugating hell within the great world of 
mankind, and solving the problem of man's deliv- 
erance therefrom. When He drove those out who 
had corrupted the temple with merchandise, and 
made the house of prayer a den of thieves, He 
but symbolized the effective manner in which He 
casts devils out of men and purifies the temple of 
the human heart. 

From the time Christ was twelve years old till 
He was about thirty, at which period He began to 
preach his Gospel, we know nothing of Him. We 
have every reason to believe, however, that He was 
constantly "about his Father's business," working 
out human redemption by the regeneration or glori- 
fication of his assumed humanity; overcoming all 
its temptations to evil, and subduing within it 
pvery evil lust and passion, and repelling all as- 



The Atonement 51 

saults of evil from without, he gradually lifted 
the nature assumed, from its low estate of sin, suf- 
fering, and bondage, into a higher and more per- 
fect state of conjunction with the Father, which 
was his own Divine nature. The whole life of Christ 
was one continued conflict with the corruptions of 
his assumed humanity, and with the power of all 
the hells. The last of his temptations was the 
passion of the cross, and his final victory was his 
resurrection from the dead. He had cleansed 
his nature from all its hereditary evils and sinful 
tendencies. He had gained the final and ever- 
lasting victory over the malignant hosts of hell. 
Humanity was now glorified ; it was lifted up and 
sanctified. Conjunction between the human and 
the Divine was an accomplished fact. A perfect 
Mediator was thus established between God and 
men in " the man, Christ Jesus." It was now 
possible for God to flood the human will with his 
Divine love, and pour his Divine light and wisdom 
into the understanding. He could now reach man- 
kind in their lost and wretched condition, and as 
the great Physician impart the healing balm to 
sorrowing hearts, extend his omnipotent helping 
hand to the helpless millions of earth, by which 
every one who is willing to be saved, and who com- 
plies with the conditions by willing and hearty co- 
operation with the Lord, is enabled to overcome 



52 Progressive Thought 

all his evils, even as Christ overcame, and thu3 to 
stand complete in all the will of God. 

Thus man becomes reconciled to God. He comes 
into agreement or at-one-ment with the Lord. It 
was impossible for Christ to accomplish this work 
of human redemption without suffering. " He was 
made perfect through suffering." Those suffer- 
ings included the death of the cross, and salvation 
could never have reached the race without it. But 
Christ's death was incidental, and not the main 
purpose for which He assumed humanity. It was 
in no sense a penal sacrifice to appease the wrath 
of God. It is not true that He died in the sinner's 
stead. To destroy man's enemies and reach him 
in his lost condition, necessitated Christ's death. 
But the salvation of man was made possible only 
by the destruction of his enemies. " The omnip- 
otent power of the life of Christ that reaches 
man, is what saves him, and not the incidental 
death that was endured in bringing that life down 
to him." He came into this world to fulfill every 
jot and tittle of the Law in our humanity, not to 
pay the penalty of its violation. He came to mani- 
fest the Father's love, not to satisfy his wrath. In 
short, Christ came expressly to reveal the Father 
and restore to the world the lost knowledge of God. 
He came to reconcile men to God, not God to men. 
There is not a line in the Bible about Christ rec- 
onciling God to the w T orld. Do you say that no 



The Atonement. 53 

one believes any such doctrine? I affirm that 
many have believed and do now profess to believe 
it. But whether they do or do not believe it, it 
follows logically from the common theory of the 
atonement. If God is so angry with the world 
that his wrath must be propitiated before He will 
save a single soul, what is that but being reconciled 
to man through the victim upon whom He pours 
to his full satisfaction the vials of his wrath ? 
There is absolutely no escape from such a conclu- 
sion. If the creed does not so express it, the 
theory certainly implies it. And it implies it so 
fully that no sophistry can evade it, and no play 
of words can expunge it. 

But, contrary to all this, we read that " God was 
in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself." 
(2 Cor. v. 9.) Again : " For if, when we were ene- 
mies, we were reconciled to God by the death of 
his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be 
saved by his life." (Rom. v. 10.) Our evil human 
nature was reconciled first in Him, and his human- 
ity became glorified as head over all things to the . 
church and as our everlasting Mediator. (See Col. 
i. 17, 18 ; ii. 1-10.) So in Ephesians: " For He 
is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath 
broken down the middle wall of partition, having 
abolished in his flesh the enmity, so that He might 
reconcile both unto God in one body, etc." (Eph. 



54 Progressive Thought 

ii. 15, 16 ; see also Col. i. 19-21 ; John i. 29 ; Titus 
ii. 13, 14.) 

We will now proceed to a consideration of the 
terra sacrifice, both as to its real and its assumed 
meaning. In its commonly understood import, 
the term sacrifice is both perverted and misunder- 
stood. In the Jewish economy it had no such sig- 
nification as is applied to it in the systems of mod- 
ern theology. Yet, through the perversion of the 
meaning of that single term, erroneous views of 
the work of Christ have been imbibed, and all 
the prevalent theories of redemption, so conflicting 
both with reason and with Scripture, have thereby 
been confirmed. 

The first definition given to sacrifice, is, " To 
make sacred or holy." Its secondary meaning is, 
"To give up something we prize very highly, for 
the good of others." It is clear that in both these 
senses Christ became a sacrifice for us. In the 
language of another, He sustained or carried our 
sorrows, our temptations, our griefs, our conflicts, 
our weaknesses and infirmities in his own human- 
ity. In short, his whole life, in untiring devotion, 
was laid down for us. He truly died for us, but 
not in our stead, nor to propitiate the vengeance 
of the Father. It is also truly said in the Scrip- 
tures that God sacrificed his Son for us. That is, 
the supreme Divinity, which was the Father, sacri- 
ficed, set apart, offered up the human, which was 



The Atonement 55 

the Son, by utterly destroying every evil pertaining 
to his humanity, as the Jewish priest sacrificed the 
animal upon the altar. Hence Christ was a sac- 
rifice for us in the truest sense of the term. The 
common notion is, that when a person brought an 
animal to be sacrificed, it implied an acknowledg- 
ment that he deserved to be treated as the animal 
was about to be treated. As the beast was to suffer 
death, so he deserved to suffer damnation. And 
as ne was required by the law to lay his hands 
upon the head of the victim, this was supposed to 
imply a transfer of his guilt from himself to the 
animal, w T hich therefore was accepted in his place 
to appease the anger of God. But as the sacrifice 
of a dumb brute was a trifling substitute for the 
damnation of a human soul, it was supposed that 
the offering up of the animal had nothing to do 
with the deliverance of the sinner, but served as 
a symbol of the death of Christ, who is regarded 
by every system of orthodox theology as the great 
Victim to whom a transfer was made of the sins of 
the whole human race, and who, in his death upon 
the cross, bore all the punishment due to the num- 
berless transgressions of men. 

But the term sacrifice, as used in the ceremonial 
worship of the Jews, had no such meaning as this. 
The affections of the person offering the animal 
in sacrifice, were symbolized. Killing the animal 
was, in fact, no part of the sacrifice. It was the 



56 Progressive Thought 

incidental preparation for it. The symbolism of 
the burnt offerings and sacrifices when rightly un- 
derstood, shows the unreserved devotion and con- 
secration of all the thoughts and affections of the 
worshipers to the Lord. No Jewish worshiper ever 
dreamed, in offering his burnt sacrifices, that he 
was appeasing the anger of God. You cannot find 
an intelligent Jew anywhere who will tell you that 
the term sacrifice ever had any such significance 
among the people of his nation. He will tell you 
that those offerings and sacrifices made under the 
Mosaic law were to impress upon the minds and 
hearts of the people that, as the Lord was the 
Father of mercies and the Giver of every good and 
perfect gift, and the loving, generous bestower of 
all blessings, so their purest affections and all their 
powers of body and mind, should be consecrated, 
set apart, and sacrificed to Him as their reason- 
able service, while they should put away all their 
evil doings, as sins against God. Herein and in 
this sense appears the absolute perfection of our 
Lord's sacrifice for us. Hence He says : " For 
their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might 
be sanctified through the truth." He offers Him- 
self up, consecrates Himself without reserve, as a 
whole offering, a perfect sacrifice, in order to accom- 
plish the salvation of man. Thus, when his hu- 
manity was sanctified and purified from all its evil 
tendencies, it became capable of communicating 



The Atonement hi 

the Divine life and the Divine light to the world 
of mankind. That Divine humanity " ever liveth 
to make intercession for us.' , Our power to over- 
come evil, whether internal or external, and to 
practice good, and walk in the divine precepts, is 
from the Lord alone. We are said to be saved, 
purchased, redeemed, justified, and made nigh by 
the blood of Christ. Whatever meaning you may 
give to the term blood, the view already given of 
the meaning of sacrifice perfectly agrees with all 
these expressions. 

The common idea of the atoning blood of Christ 
is based upon the perverted notion of sacrifice, and 
supposes that when Christ took the sinner's place 
and died in his stead, that God regarded Christ as 
his enemy, and poured upon his innocent head all 
the vials of his fiercest wrath to the uttermost, 
even all the punishment due to the sins of the 
whole world. But that a God who is love itself, 
could pretend that his Son was guilty when He 
knew He was not, and punish the innocent as 
though the measure of his gu^'lt would contain 
that of the whole world from Creation's birth to 
the end of time, is a doctrine so revolting to rea- 
son and every sense of justice and right, that it 
would seem impossible that anybody on earth 
could be found credulous enough to believe it. It 
is a monstrous perversion of the truth concerning 



58 Progressive Thought 

man's salvation. It dishonors God, perverts the 
Scriptures, confirms falsities, and misleads men. 

The Gospel teaches us to forgive our enemies. 
Our Lord taught that we should forgive those who 
sin against us seven times a day, even until we can 
number seventy times seven forgivenesses. No 
idea is held out that we are to have satisfaction 
before we forgive. If our enemy says he repents, 
we are to forgive him, and there the matter ends. 
And are we poor human creatures to be more for- 
giving than the infinite God of love ? We are 
forbidden to take the least measure of vengeance 
even on an enemy ; and will a God of infinite love 
and infinite justice take vengeance on his innocent 
Son ? Is God " Love " only in name and not in 
essence? Can He be swayed by passions that 
would disgrace the worst type of humanity? Are 
attributes to be adored in God, that would be exe- 
crated in man ? We are taught that God will not 
forgive anybody a single transgression unless He 
can wring from somebody an amount of suffering 
equivalent to the offense. The logic of the theory 
is, that God takes his pay for sin by the infliction 
of torture, either on the sinner or his substitute ; 
and hence He will never forgive sin at all, unless 
He is paid for doing it. From this it follows that 
God requires in his creatures the practice of a 
charity which He does not Himself practice, and 
consigns them to the everlasting torments of hell, 



The Atonement 59 

because they are disposed to follow his example in 
the matter of forgiving enemies, by taking satis- 
faction in the free exercise of wrath first, and ex- 
tending forgiveness afterwards. 

In the parable of the prodigal son, the elder 
brother, who was angry and would not go in to 
greet the returned wanderer, more truthfully rep- 
resents the orthodox idea of God than does the 
loving, compassionate father, who beheld his son 
while yet a great way off, and ran to meet him, 
and fell on his neck and kissed him a glad wel- 
come back to his father's house. Christ intended 
the father in that parable to represent God in his 
infinite love, compassion, and forgiveness toward 
his wandering, sinning, suffering children on earth. 
Did the father demand any satisfaction? Did he 
inflict any wrath upon his repentant son ? Did he 
refuse to receive him beneath the shelter of the old 
home until somebody had paid an equivalent for 
the fortune he harl wasted in riotous living? Did 
he insist that his first-born son should be slain to 
appease his wrath for the other's sins? By no 
means. It was far otherwise. He orders the fat- 
ted calf to be killed, and merry-making to begin. 
It is all the satisfaction he wants, that his lost boy 
whom he had mourned as dead, is received safe 
and sound within the circle of the dear old home. 

This is a true picture, in finite measure, of the 
immeasurable, infinite love of God. There is in 



60 Progressive Thought. 

it no wrath, no vengeance, no vicarious atonement, 
no payment of debt, no rendering an equivalent, 
no arbitrary demand for satisfaction, and no theo- 
logical dogmas about the sufferings of the damned 
unless a substitute is provided to placate the wrath 
of the father. It is as clear from all these things 
as a cloudless sky at night spangled with the bright 
stars of God. As another has forcibly said, " We 
find in it no contract, no implacable and enraged 
Deity, no technicalities of law, no division of the 
Godhead into a plurality of Persons, no sacrifice 
of an innocent Son for a guilty race, no impossible 
exchange of sin for righteousness, or righteousness 
for sin, no vicarious suffering and no vicarious 
goodness. 

"Our Father himself comes down upon the 
earth, as the Good Shepherd, in search of his lost 
sheep, and comes in the only way He could come. 
He endures all the labors that the work demands. 
He suffers all the temptations and agonies that are 
incident to that work. He subdues all the enemies 
that oppose Him. He finds his .lost children blind, 
naked, starved, in prison, diseased, dying, and He 
opens their eyes ; He clothes them ; He feeds them 
with heavenly food, his own love and truth ; He 
throws open the prison-doors; He heals their dis- 
eases; He gives them eternal life. Could infinite 
love do less? Could infinite power do more? How 
beautiful, harmonious, and complete this view of 



The Atonement. 61 

the Lord's sufferings and death ; how consistent 
with itself; with infinite Love and Wisdom ; with 
human reason ; with the wisest and purest love in 
human hearts." 

Happy are they on whom the clear light of 
truth upon this great subject has dawned. It is 
like the passing away of a dark and angry cloud. 
The heavens no longer gleam with the fearful 
lightnings of Divine vengeance, nor do the thun- 
ders of Jehovah's wrath shake the soul with dread 
alarms. All is calm, peaceful, and serene. The 
Lord as a sun pours forth the effulgence of his 
divine love and truth, and all over the earth, in 
every nation, whoever turns to Him is warmed 
by his love and enlightened by his truth. That 
love and truth are as free to the whole world as 
the circumambient air that surrounds the globe, 
or as the light of the sun that floods our earth 
with his cheerful beams. 

In full-orbed splendor the Divine love and light 
now shines upon some people, and faint glimmer- 
ings already tinge the sombre gloom of the more 
benighted nations. They who walk according to 
the light they have, are led into more light by the 
Lord. In this view of the atonement of Christ, 
the whole race of man is brought into conjunction, 
more or less, with the Lord and the divine fullness 
of love and truth that flow from Him. Thus He 
is the " true light that lighteth every man that 



62 Progressive Thought 

coraeth into the world." It is the light of life, 
which shines alike for all, and which all may re- 
ceive. The love of darkness is what keeps man 
from the light ; the love of falsity is all that hides 
the knowledge of the truth ; and the love of sin 
and self alone bars our entrance into heaven, and 
prevents conjunction with the Lord Jesus Christ, 
and the reception of the fullness of his infinite 
blessing of salvation and eternal life. By repent- 
ance we put away our sins, and by turning to the 
Lord and walking in his commandments we are 
conjoined to Him, and " receive of his fullness, 
even grace for grace." 



♦-^^•i 



III. 

TEE ASCENSION AND MEDIATION OF CHRIST 



HE great apostle to the Gentiles says : " Now 
a Mediator is not a Mediator of one, but 
God is one. ,, (Gal. iii. 20.) "For there is one 
God, and one Mediator between God and men, the 
man Christ Jesus." (1 Tim. ii. 5.) 

In the contemplation of any subject in which 
Infinity dwells, the finite mind is more or less en- 
compassed with difficulties. Thought is weak, 
speech crippled, and language circumscribed by 
limitations that render it impossible to gain but 
an imperfect conception of that which is infinite, 
absolute, and eternal. 

Hence nothing can be more unwise than for any 
body of men of imperfect knowledge, limited at- 
tainments, defective judgments, warped often by 
prejudice, swayed by early training, and biased 
by traditions, to prescribe the limit of religious 
thought, fix the boundary line of religious knowl- 
edge, or assume to grasp by mental conception the 
shoreless, fathomless ocean of infinite truth. None 
but the omniscient God can fully comprehend that 
which is absolute and eternal. Hence, though we 
may go on " increasing in the knowledge of God " 
63 



64 Progressive Thought 

forever, we shall never exhaust the fountain of 
knowledge. It is impossible to condense thought 
or simplify language, so as to explain any doctrine 
drawn purely from the Word, in such a manner 
that every mind can grasp it in all its bearings. 
There will be depths fathomless to some, heights 
above the reach of others, and to the top of which 
some pinions can never soar. Nor will eternity, 
nor the eternal progression of unfettered mind, 
remove the difficulty. No longer under the lim- 
itations of time and space, our growth in love and 
our expansion in the knowledge of the Infinite 
will far surpass all our present capacities. 

In the contemplation of a subject like the one - 
now before us, we must not forget that natural 
things are to be considered in the realm of nature, 
and spiritual things in the domain of spirit. Con- 
founding them insures confusion of ideas, obscu- 
rity of understanding, and apparent conflict of one 
truth with another. This is done whenever you 
undertake to explain a spiritual fact in a natural 
way, or according to natural or material circum- 
stances. In every such case " counsel is darkened 
by words without knowledge." Error is confirmed 
as truth, and darkness as light. Making no dis- 
tinction, or not the proper one, between spiritual 
truth and natural facts, one never obtains anything 
more than a knowledge of the Word in its literal 
sense, and hence must remain in utter ignorance 



The Mediation of Christ. 65 

of the Word in its spiritual sense. By those who 
do not know, the idea of a deeper sense than that 
of the mere letter of the Word is regarded as 
foolishness. Everything recorded in the Bible is 
taken as a statement of natural, historical, bio- 
graphical, literal facts, and nothing more. 

In this view of the case, the Bible treats much 
more of earthly and temporal than it does of 
heavenly and eternal things ; and says much more 
about earthly kingdoms and nations than about 
the Lord and his church. In its spiritual sense 
lies the truth or evidence of its Divine inspiration. 
If there is no deep, internal, spiritual sense under- 
neath the letter of the Word, then it is no more 
inspired than any mere human production. In 
the rigid adherence to the practice of literal in- 
terpretation, not only have erroneous and conflict- 
ing theories been multiplied, sects and sectarian 
divisions created, science and revelation brought 
into conflict, reason and intelligence outraged, but 
vast numbers of reasoning, thinking, progressive 
men have turned away with disgust, refusing to 
have anything to do with religious systems built 
on a blind and unreasoning credulity. 

Our Lord says : u That which is born of the 
flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit 
is spirit." When He' assumed a material human 
body, He appeared among men in the human form. 
That was the only way in which He could approach 
5 



66 Progressive Thought. 

man. He must come in man's nature and in his 
bodily form ; and then not only could Jehovah 
draw near to man, but man could draw near to 
God, and see with the natural eyes the material 
form in which God dwelt, and through which He 
was manifested to the world. " To seek and to 
save those who were lost/' was the object for which 
our Lord came into the world ; and for the full 
and complete accomplishment of the same end, 
He left the world and returned to the Father. All 
that He could do in the flesh was done. When He 
uttered that memorable cry, " It is finished," the 
work for which He assumed our nature was com- 
pleted. The last battle and the last temptation 
closed with the passion of the cross. His human- 
ity was now glorified, and the human was brought 
at-one with the Divine. All the gross, material 
elements of the nature He assumed were dissipated, 
and his human was made Divine. 

Hence, after his resurrection, our Lord was 
never seen with the natural eyes. When He was 
laid in the sepulchre, He had left the world and 
withdrawn from all recognition by the natural 
senses. By his resurrection from the dead He 
entered the spiritual world, and his own disci- 
ples never saw Him except as their eyes were 
opened to behold Him in his glorified state. He 
came from the Father, and came into the world. 
Now He had left the world and was about to 



The Mediation of Christ. 67 

return to the Father. Our Lord says He came down 
from heaven, yet we are not to understand by this 
that He ever left heaven. (John iii. 13.) "And 
no man hath ascended up to heaven, but He that 
came down from heaven, even the Son of man 
who is in heaven." God sent his Son into the 
world. (John iii. 17; xvii. 18.) When God mani- 
fested Himself in the flesh, it did not necessitate 
his leaving heaven to come to earth as one person 
leaves one country and goes to another. Nor did 
He send his Son in the sense in which an earthly 
parent would send his son from home to some dis- 
tant country to do a certain work. " In the be- 
ginning was the Word, and the Word was with 
God, and the Word was God. And the Word was 
made flesh, and dwelt among us, . . full of grace 
and troth." (John i. 1, 14.) The Father sent forth 
his eternal Word, which is his Truth or Wisdom, 
and that Word was made flesh, or became incar- 
nate, and hence was called the Son of God, dwell- 
ing among men full of grace and truth. 

God did not become man, nor did the Son as a 
separate Divine Person come into the world ; but 
Jehovah veiled Himself in human flesh, that He 
might approach man without consuming him by 
the brightness of hi3 glory or his divine essence. 
Hence, in order to understand what is meant by 
the ascension of Christ, we must divest our minds 
of the literal idea of ascent and descent ; and also 



68 Progressive Thought 

of the thought of two separate and distinct Per- 
sons in the Godhead. Therefore, when Christ came 
into the world, He is said to have descended ; but 
He did not leave heaven to come to earth, for it 
would be simply impossible for God, who fiils 
heaven and earth, to leave either. He was as much 
in heaven when He was manifest on earth in the 
flesh, as He ever was or is now. And God was no 
more truly on earth when He became incarnate 
than He was before ; and He is in the world now 
as really as when in the material body. 

God fills immensity, is omnipresent, and cannot 
be said to leave one place to go to another. " Do 
not I fill heaven and earth ? saith the Lord." ( Jer. 
xxiii. 24.) Hence, by descent and ascent we are 
not to understand a change in space, but a change 
in state. In the mind of man the uppermost fac- 
ulty is the will ; then the understanding ; thence 
the thoughts, words, and actions. So every human 
mind consists of two principal faculties — the will 
and the understanding. Now to descend is to pro- 
ceed from the will downward to the understanding, 
and thence downward to the thought, speech, and 
external deportment. From the highest to the 
lowest faculty, or from the spiritual and eternal to 
the natural and temporal, or from the unseen to 
the visible, is descent. From the material to the 
spiritual, from the visible to the invisible, from 



The Mediation of Christ. 69 

the human to the Divine, and from the earthly to 
the heavenly, is ascent. 

In the ascension of Christ, therefore, we need to 
divest the mind of all ideas of time and space, 
and not to think of Him as ascending through 
space to an imaginary locality above the starry 
heavens, but as passing through a change of state 
represented by his transfiguration on the Holy 
Mount. Tabor, as " a high mountain apart," was 
itself a perfect symbol of the exalted state in 
which our Lord was at that time. The state was 
one of heavenly exaltation, and really in the spir- 
itual world. Christ and his three chosen apostles 
literally ascended Mount Tabor, but spiritually 
they ascended the holy mount of God in the change 
of state denoted by the transfiguration. " Hence, 
when Christ glorified his human nature, making it 
Divine and one with the Father, He is said to 
have ascended up where He was before, that He 
might fill all things." " We are not to suppose 
that the Divine human became the same as God 
and identical with the Father, but that it came 
into harmony with God, capable of being filled 
with all the Divine fullness, thus becoming a per- 
fect medium for communicating that Divine full- 
ness to men." Now the Spirit of Truth can flow 
through that glorified Humanity from the Father 
to his children on earth, enabling them to cry, 
"Abba, Father." And you can see what Jesus 



70 Progressive Thought. 

meant when He said to his disciples that unless 
He went away, that is, ascended to the Father, 
the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, 
would not come. But that, if He went away, He 
would send Him unto them. (John xvi. 7-14.) 
The Holy Spirit is the Lord himself in the Word, 
and not a third Person in the Godhead. Jesus 
says He will send them another Comforter, " even 
the Spirit of Truth." " I will not leave you com- 
fortless ; I will come to you." (John xiv. 17, 18.) 
He says He will come and make his abode with 
them. (Ibid. v. 23.) "As He is in the Father and 
the Father in Him, so conjointly do they dwell in 
the renewed wills and understandings of men, as 
the soul dwells in the body." 

The Divine life which now flows through the 
glorified Humanity without anything to impede its 
progress, is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, 
the Comforter, the bread that came down from 
heaven, the water of life, the well of water spring- 
ing up into everlasting life, the opened fountain 
for sin and uncleanness, the river of the water of 
life, the Lord's flesh and blood, Bethesda, Siloara ; 
in short, the Lord himself in his divine fullness 
manifesting Himself to the children of men ac- 
cording to their capacity and preparation to re- 
ceive of that fullness. 

Through the unobstructed flow of the divine 
spirit of life and truth, through the human will 



The Mediation of Christ. 71 

and understanding, man is renewed, changed, 
washed, cleansed, purified, reformed, and regen- 
erated. Cleansed by the washing of the Word, 
renewed by the renewing of the Holy Spirit, 
washed in the blood of the Lamb, and purified by 
the blood of Christ, all mean the same thing. The 
holy germ of the Divine life thus enters the soil 
of our human nature. As it germinates and 
springs up, it subdues that evil nature to itself. It 
becomes purified from its evil and sinful tenden- 
cies precisely as our Lord's corrupt human became 
purified and made Divine. The Lord is thus said 
to dwell in us and we in Him. The water we 
drink becomes in us a " well of water, springing 
up into everlasting life." The bread we eat is the 
living bread which came down from heaven, that 
we may eat thereof and not die. " He that eateth 
of this bread shall live forever. I am the living 
bread which came down from heaven ; if any man 
eat of this bread, he shall live forever ; and the 
bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will 
give for the life of the world." (John vi. 50, 51.) 
Thus we are regenerated and born anew, and 
become sons of God. (John i. 12.) Our Heav- 
enly Father comes to us, and inclines us by his 
Holy Spirit to come to Him. As He overcame our 
enemies in his own human nature, so He enables 
us to overcome. His victory is our victory, his 
righteousness is our righteousness, and his salva- 



72 Progressive Thought. 

tion is our salvation, not in the sense of being im- 
puted to us, but realized within us as a living 
force, "the power of an endless life." "The 
righteousness of Christ can no more be imputed to 
the sinner than the health of a sound body can be 
imputed to an invalid, or sanity to the insane." 
You cannot transfer character from one person to 
another. There can be no exchange of guilt for 
innocence, or innocence for guilt, except as one 
becomes such in the transformation of his own 
character. 

Yet the popular view of this subject is, that an 
instantaneous transfer may be made of the right- 
eousness of Christ to the sinner, and of the un- 
righteousness of the sinner to Christ. Out of this 
theory has grown the notion that a man may tram- 
ple every commandment of the Decalogue under 
his feet till the very hour of his death, and then, 
if he accepts this doctrine, and believes with all 
his heart- that the blood of Christ has atoned for 
his sins, they will be instantly blotted out, and he 
will go straight to heaven as a companion of the 
holy angels of God. " But in such a doctrine a 
serious mistake is made as to the nature of sin. 
Sin is regarded as something that can be atoned 
for by the suffering of some other person than the 
sinner himself. It supposes that the sinner may 
be bought off, or delivered from sin and its conse- 
quences, by the payment of a stipulated price con- 



The Mediation of Christ. 73 

sisting of a certain amount of suffering endured 
by another person substituted in the sinner's place. 
Hence pardon, forgiveness, and salvation, are 
things that must be purchased, and that only 
through another's sufferings. But sin is a spiritual 
disease." It is an inverted condition of the soul. 
To heal all ouv diseases and redeem our lives from 
destruction, Jesus comes as the great Physician. 

Thus the Lord, in the assumption of our poor, 
weak, depraved, sinful nature, is said to have de- 
scended even into the lower parts of the earth — 
the nethermost state of man's depraved, perverted, 
inverted, wretched existence ; culminating in his 
death upon the cross at the hands of wicked men, 
amid the darkness and utter oblivion of all knowl- 
edge of truth. " From this point He began the 
ascent by the resurrection, thus putting off all 
that was corruptible or material in his human, all 
that was not perfectly in accord with his essential 
Divine nature, and by this means making his 
human Divine, so that the infinite Jehovah dwells 
in it, as the soul of man dwells in his material 
body. Glorifying his human nature and conjoin- 
ing it with God himself, was the ascension of the 
Son to the Father." Our Lord came from the holy 
presence of the Father, or from the exalted heights 
of his essential Divine nature, to the lowest, most 
desperate condition, where humanity groans under 
bondage to hell; and having conquered all man's 



74 Progressive Thought . 

enemies in his assumed human nature, and having 
endured all the sufferings inseparably connected 
with his mission, and having succeeded in reach- 
ing the lowest, saddest Gethsemane of human ex- 
perience, He returns the mighty conqueror, " with 
dyed garments from Bozrah." He returns as the 
"King of Glory," from the subjugation of hell's 
dominion. The eternal gates lift up their heads; 
the everlasting doors are wide open flung ; and 
Messiah, in his ransomed, redeemed, regenerated, 
glorified humanity, now all victorious, passes the 
high arches of heaven's "gates of pearl" to the 
Father's embrace, to the throne of God, where 
u He ever liveth to make intercession for us." 

Thus it is manifest that Christ came to redeem 
men not from the Father's wrath, but from hell's 
dominion ; not from the penalty of a violated law, 
but from the accursed slavery of sin ; not from the 
avenging justice of God, but from the cruel injus- 
tice and oppression of our enemies. He does this 
by shedding his own blood, which is the Spirit of 
Truth, and which He pours through his glorified 
humanity into the souls of men, by which they are 
enlightened, cleansed, and regenerated. 

While the idea of the literal blood of Christ 
fills the mind, it is impossible to get at the truth 
concerning his offices and work. " The letter kill- 
eth, but the spirit giveth life." The literal mate- 
rial blood shed on Calvary passed away just as any 



The Mediation of Christ. 7o 

other natural substance does. But Christ's blood 
understood as the Spirit of Truth, by which we are 
cleansed and sanctified, never passes away. He 
sheds it still, and will forever shed it, pouring it 
into the hearts of men and angels. Hence He is 
the Mediator of the New Covenant, which is ever- 
lasting, needing no renewal, and which is never 
to be abrogated or set aside. This is indeed re- 
demption by his blood. If not, what is, and where 
w T ill you find it ? If by this means men are not 
reconciled to God, through what agency can you 
hope to effect their reconciliation? If this is not 
the atonement, the coming together of God and 
man, the agreement, the at-one-ment, there is no 
meaning in the term and no force in language. 

Contrast, if you please, the commonly received 
view of the atonement and mediation of Christ 
with that here presented. According to the popu- 
lar idea, Christ has by his sufferings and death 
appeased the wrath of the Father, satisfied the 
demands of justice, redeemed from the penalties 
of sin or the condemnation of the law those that 
believe in the virtues of his atoning sacrifice, and 
paid all the debt which the numberless transgres- 
sions of mankind had contracted. When the sin- 
ner believes this theory, he is justified freely, ab- 
solved from all his iniquities and adopted into the 
family of God. His sins were imputed to Christ 
and Christ's merits are imputed to him. In God's 



76 Progressive Thought. 

ledger the sins and crimes of the whole world are 
charged over to the Saviour's account. He assumes 
them, and takes their settlement upon Himself. 
All his merits are placed to the sinner's credit, 
and henceforth God looks upon him as though he 
had never sinned. A regular contract between 
the Father and Son has been entered into. It has 
been signed, sealed, acknowledged, and recorded. It 
is unalterable. It is impossible for either party 
to evade it or render it null and void. God the 
Father, who is the party of the first part, cannot 
set it aside ; for, as it is impossible for Him to 
lie, He must keep his agreement. Jesus Christ, 
the party of the second part, cannot evade it, for 
He is God also, and hence it is impossible for Him 
not to do as He agrees. Accordingly He carries 
out his part of the agreement in good faith. He 
settles the account, pays the debt, appeases the 
Father's wrath, suffers the infliction of that wrath 
till the bitter cup is drained to the dregs. He 
suffers till justice cries, " It is enough ;" and 
the Father is satisfied that He has received a full 
equivalent for the debt ; that the sins of the whole 
world have been atoned for, and that his Son 
has performed his part of the contract. 

Now, the Father is bound by a solemn compact 
to forgive or remit the sins of the whole world, 
especially of such as believe. He can exact no 
part of the penalty of sin from man. He can 



The Mediation of Christ 11 

bring no part of the sufferings of sin upon the 
sinner. If the debt has been paid by Christ, God 
the Father has no right to anything in addition 
thereto ; and if Christ atoned for the sins of the 
whole world, then logically the wliole world is 
freed from sin and its consequences. According 
to the terras of the contract, God has no right to a 
pang of grief or a tear of sorrow from anybody, 
especially from those who have accepted Christ 
and w T hat He has done for them. Yet Christians 
have been, and often are, afflicted and made to suf- 
fer in this world more than sinners. Hence 
Christ's sacrifice either was not designed to pay all 
the debt, or it failed to a certain extent in accom- 
plishing the object for which it was made, or else 
the Father's wrath waxed uncontrollably hot, and 
He determined to have additional satisfaction by 
inflicting torture on those whom He had adopted 
as his own children, and whose debt had been once 
fully paid. In either case the common theory falls 
to the ground. 

Again, it is assumed and taught that Christ has 
become. our Advocate at the bar of God, in which 
character He is represented as interceding with 
the Father to spare sinners and not pour out his 
wrath upon them. But certainly it is a terrible 
reflection on the character of God to imply even, 
as the very presence of an Advocate ivoidd imply, 
that Jehovah was inclined to violate not only his 



78 Progressive Thought 

word, but his oath also, by refusing to keep his 
part of the most solemn contract over entered into 
in time or eternity. Just think of it ! That a 
God with whom a lie is impossible, who is truth 
itself and love itself, needs an Advocate or Inter- 
cessor to plead with Him to do as He has sworn 
to do. As though his memory were treacherous, 
and He needed to be reminded of his agreement 
lest He forget it ; or as though his wrath had 
grown hungry again, and He was in danger of 
allowing it to break out in renewed vengeance 
upon those whose sins had been atoned for. Either 
the common theory of Christ as Intercessor im- 
plies that God is liable to break his word, violate 
his oath by refusing to keep the agreement made 
with his Son, or the office of Mediator is an ab- 
surdity, and the Mediator himself a mere figure- 
head or dignitary with nothing to do. 

The w r hole theory is a gros3 misconception of 
the truth on this subject, encompassed with insur- 
mountable difficulties, and filled with absurdities 
with which sober reason can have no fellowship, 
and with which the Sacred Scriptures rightly in- 
terpreted are at utter variance. You can never 
get the true meaning of the office of Mediator and 
Intercessor while you look upon Christ as one 
Person interceding with the Father as another 
Person, imploring Him to have mercy on sinners ; 
for we must never forget that there is only one 



The Mediation of Christ. 79 

God, as the Bible declares and human reason 
affirms. Now, " a Mediator is not a Mediator of 
one, but God is one." "For there is one God, 
and one Mediator between God and men, the man 
Christ Jesus." The idea is, that God is one, man 
is the other, and Christ in his Divine Humanity 
is the Mediator, the conjoining medium between 
God and men. " Through that Divine Human 
in which Jehovah dwells, as the soul in the body, 
God approaches man with his light and life ; and 
through the same medium man draws near to God 
in filial confidence, crying, 'Abba, Father/ and 
receives in himself the Father's light and life, and 
thus God and men who by this 'way' come to 
Him, are no longer at variance, but are in agree- 
ment or at-one with each other. The influx of 
Divine life with messages of Divine love and wis- 
dom is constantly flowing from God, who is Love 
itself, into the souls of men. It flows from the 
infinite Jehovah, who dwells bodily in the glorified 
Human, as the light and heat of the sun flow forth 
giving life to every living thing in the material 
universe." 

Now, descending in our reasoning from the In- 
finite to the finite, we may use the ocean cable as 
an illustration of human mediation. Europe and 
America are separated by the Atlantic Ocean. 
The cable brings them together. It unites them 
by becoming a perfect connecting medium, so as to 



80 Progressive Thought. 

bring the two widely separated countries into direct 
and speedy communication with each other. As 
the electric current with the messages it bears 
flows through the cable from shore to shore, so the 
messages of our Heavenly Father's love flow 
through his glorified Human to his children on 
earth. So with the telephone. By this medium 
two persons separated by many miles can converse 
in audible tones as though present in the same 
room. The telephone is the mediator or medium 
of communication between the two parties. It 
removes the obstacles, so to speak, of time and 
space, and enables them to commune with each 
other. Now the limitless ocean of Infinity inter- 
vened between God and men. Communication 
was cut off. " God could not draw near to man 
and not consume him with his ineffable brightness. 
It was impossible for man to approach God be- 
cause of the perversity of his will and the be- 
nighted condition of his understanding. But, by 
clothing Himself with the human and making that 
human Divine — one with Himself — God could 
communicate his Divine life to man in such a 
manner as to effect a reconciliation. He could 
pour his Divine love into man's will and his Di- 
vine wisdom into his understanding, so as to enable 
man to draw near to God." Therefore in the 
glorified human, in which the Infinite Essence of 
God dwells, the reconciliation of man to God is 



The Mediation of Christ. 81 

effected. "For God is in Christ, reconciling the 
world to Himself." This mediation of Christ will 
never cease, for " He ever liveth to make inter- 
cession for us." The Divine Human is, and ever 
will be, Jehovah's arm of strength by which He 
reaches down and saves his creatures. It is God's 
right hand of power. It is the hand that sways 
his sceptre of universal dominion by which his 
kingdom ruleth over all. 

As one of the effects of the reconciliation thus 
accomplished between God and men, this prayer 
ascends daily from millions of human hearts : 
" Thy kingdom come, thy will be done as in the 
heavens, so on earth." Now, as an eloquent preacher 
of these glorious truths has well said, " How beau- 
tiful, how harmonious, how reasonable, and how 
scriptural this view of the atonement, ascension, 
and mediation of Jesus Christ ! There is in it no 
angry God ; no wrathful Father satiating his ven- 
geance on his innocent Son ; no innocent victim 
suffering in the stead of the guilty ; no legal sub- 
terfuges or technicalities; no impossible transfer 
of righteousness to the unrighteous, or of sin to 
the sinless ; no division of the absolute personal 
unity of God ; no perversion of the Sacred Scrip- 
tures ; and no insult to the sober reason and com- 
mon sense of mankind." 

The doctrine of the ascension and mediation of 
Christ as here presented, blends in sweet harmony 
6 



82 Progressive Thought. 

all the Scriptures bearing upon the subject, and 
solves many perplexing difficulties inseparably 
connected with the common view concerning it. 
There are no unreasonable statements which we 
are compelled to believe, and no impenetrable 
mysteries we are forbidden to explore. The whole 
subject is clear and lucid to such especially as are 
in the Spirit. It shines like the light, scattering 
the darkness ; distills as the daw, permeating uni- 
versal humanity ; it soothes, like the warm embrace 
of loving sympathy, the stricken ones of earth ; it 
delivers the oppressed, opens the eyes of the blind, 
and they see the glory of God ; it unstops the ears 
of the deaf, and they hear in the Spirit the sweet 
melodies of heaven ; it feeds the hungry with 
bread and they are satisfied ; it gives water to the 
thirsty and they thirst no more ; it gives healing 
to the sick and life to the dead ; it gives power to 
the faint, strength to the weak, and rest, sweet 
rest, to the weary ; it brings near those that are far 
off, making them nigh by the blood of Christ ; it 
reveals the commandments of the Lord as the 
path of life and the way of salvation, and enables 
us to walk therein with delight; it gives us joy 
and gladness, and sorrow and sighing flee away. 
Finally, it proclaims the acceptable year of the 
Lord, and sounds the herald notes of joy, which 
shall be to all people " peace on earth and good 
will to men." 






IV. 

DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 



subject is fraught with more momentous 
concern to us, as intelligent and rational 
beings, than the fact that we are soon to leave this 
world and enter upon another state of existence, 
of which we know by experience absolutely noth- 
ing. While on earth, we are, so to speak, entombed 
in a material body of flesh and blood, hedged 
about, cramped, hampered by the limitations of 
time and space. It is necessary that we should be 
clothed with a body homogeneous with the world 
in which we live. We are in a material world, and 
are, therefore, clothed with a material body. A 
spiritual body would not serve our purpose in the 
world of matter, nor could these natural bodies 
serve us in the spiritual world. It is impossible to 
get a correct knowledge of this subject while we 
confound natural and spiritual things. We cannot 
look at spiritual realities with the natural eye. 
We cannot see anything spiritual with our mate- 
rial organs of sense. Everything in the spiritual 
world is in obscurity to the perceptions of flesh 
and blood. This was where the Jews made a fatal 
mistake at our Lord's first advent. The idea of a 
83 



84 .Progressive Thought. 

mere temporal kingdom engrossed their minds and 
darkened their understandings. Their opinion 
was a preconceived opinion. It came of Rab- 
binical teaching. It became the tradition of the 
elders, sacredly cherished from generation to gen- 
eration. Every prophecy concerning the coming 
of the Messiah was interpreted in its literal sense. 
The knowledge of spiritual things was lost. From 
first to last, from the learned Rabbi or Doctor of the 
Law to the humblest Jewish worshiper, the people 
had gross material ideas of everything spiritual. 
Even the disciples for a long time cherished only 
the idea of Messiah's kingdom as a temporal and 
earthly kingdom. They never gave up that no- 
tion till after our Lord's resurrection. It is ex- 
tremely difficult to empty the mind of what pre- 
occupies it, and divest the thought of the particu- 
lar internal quality with which it comes invested 
from the will and understanding, If the will is 
perverse or the understanding not enlightened, 
correspondingly the thought or mental conceptions 
will be in obscurity. In such case it is the grop- 
ing of a blind man to find his way, or the effort 
of a cripple to compete in a race. It is impossi- 
ble from a false premise to reach right conclusions, 
or to gather good fruit from a corrupt tree. Error 
may have the appearance of truth, and evil that 
of good. But it is only in appearance, and never 
in reality.. 



Death and Resurrection. 85 

" There are two errors into which we have fallen 
in our interpretation of the Scriptures, concerning 
death and the resurrection. First, in regarding 
the death of the material body as the result of 
sin, and in part its penalty; and, second, in sup- 
posing the resurrection from the dead to mean the 
resuscitation of the natural body. A great deal 
is said in the Scriptures concerning death, but it 
is seldom spoken of as referring to the dissolution 
of the material body. ' In the day thou eatest 
thereof thou shalt surely die/ is a statement of 
what actually occurred in Adam's experience ; yet 
he did not die as to his physical body in the day 
that he ate the forbidden fruit. It is a statement 
of a literal truth in every one's experience to-day. 
In the day we sin, we die. Every man dies the 
day he eats of the fruit which is forbidden. He 
died then as he dies to-day. Sin and death are 
inseparably conjoined. But the death spoken of, 
and which man suffers as the result of transgres- 
sion, is a very different thing from the putting off 
of this earthly house of our tabernacle. It is 
spiritual death. It is the death of purity, the 
death of righteousness, the death of true thoughts 
and good affections, the death of all heavenly 
qualities, the death of love toward God and the 
neighbor. This is the terrible death usually spoken 
of in the Sacred Scriptures as the penalty of trans- 
gression. Man sins every day that he transgresses 



86 Progressive Thought. 

the Divine Commandments, and dies every day 
that he sins." 

That the above is a true description of the real 
death in which man is involved, may be seen by 
comparison of opposites. By sin, impurity enters 
and purity dies; unrighteousness prevails and 
righteousness dies. As falsity is confirmed, truth 
departs from the soul. Evil predominates, and 
good dies in the exact ratio. As the principles of 
hell thrive, the qualities of a heavenly origin and 
character are extinguished. As enmity toward 
God and hatred toward man fill the soul, love to 
God and the neighbor dies. So in the exact ratio 
in which men sin does death ensue. The truth of 
this is confirmed by universal observation. The 
man in whom evil reigns supreme, is dead to all 
those qualities which belong to genuine spiritual 
life. It may be truthfully said of him that " he 
is dead while he liveth." It is a terrible death. 
The dissolution of the material body can have no 
effect upon the real man. But the death illustrated 
above is the death of the man himself. It is the 
death " whose pang outlasts the fleeting breath." 
It is the process by which devils are made. You 
say of such a man, " he is a perfect devil," or, " he 
is a devil incarnate." He is in the human form 
and in a material body. But everything that 
makes an angel has died within him, and only that 
which makes a devil lives. Of such a man the 



Death and Resurrection. 87 

Scriptures say, " He is dead." It is from this 
death the Lord came to save us. " I am come 
that they might have life, and that they might 
have it more abundantly. " (John x. 10.) " For 
thou hast delivered my soul from death." (Ps. 
cxvi. 8.) " But if the wicked will turn from all 
his sin which he hath committed, and keep all my 
statutes, and do that which is law T ful and right, he 
shall surely live ; he shall not die." (Ezek. xviii. 
21.) " When the wicked man turneth away from 
his wickedness that he hath committed, and doeth 
that which is lawful and right, he shall save his 
soul alive; because he considereth and turneth 
away from all his transgressions that he hath com- 
mitted, he shall surely live; he shall not die." 
(Ibid. ver. 27, 28.) " Make you a new heart and 
a right spirit, for why will ye die, O house of 
Israel?" (Ver. 31.) "For I have no pleasure in 
the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord ; 
wherefore turn yourselves and live ye." (Ver. 32.) 
" Even so must the Son of man be lifted up ; that 
whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but 
have eternal life." (John iii. 15.) " He that hear- 
efeh my word, and believeth on Him that sent me, 
hath everlasting life ; and shall not come into con- 
demnation, but is passed from death unto life." 
(John viii. 24.) " Verily, verily, I say unto you, 
the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall 
hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that 



88 Progressive Thought. 

hear shall live/' (Ver. 25.) " He that believeth 
on me hath everlasting life." (Ibid. vi. 47.) " This 
is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that 
a man may eat thereof and not die." " I am the 
living bread which came down from heaven. If 
any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever." 
(John vi. 50, 51.) "If a man keep my saying, he 
shall never see death.'" (Ibid. viii. 51.) "Jesus 
said unto her, I am the Resurrection and the Life ; 
he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet 
shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth 
in me shall never die" (Ibid. ix. 25, 26.) "And 
you hath He quickened who were dead in tres- 
passes and sins." (Eph. ii. 1.) 

Any one of ordinary intelligence can see that 
the life and death mentioned in the above quota- 
tions, cannot refer to the life and death of the 
material body. For we know that the physical or- 
ganism of the wicked man often lives long after 
the spiritual part, which is the man himself, has 
died. And the good and holy die as to their ma- 
terial bodies, although our Lord asserts over and 
over again, that such shall never die; showing 
most conclusively that the death of the body is 
not meant when the Scriptures speak of death. 
When physical death is rightly viewed, and in the 
light of spiritual truth, we cannot fail to recog- 
nize the wisdom and mercy of God in providing 
for the passing away of these corruptible bodies 



Deatlt <t ml Resurrection. 89 

of flesh and blood. We discover in it an infin- 
itely wise and beneficent operation of that divine 
order which runs harmoniously through all the 
Creator's works. According to the revelations 
of geological science, long ages before man was 
created death existed. Some entire species of 
animals and plants had died and become extinct 
before man appeared. In a material body, man is 
so hemmed in by limitations as to prevent devel- 
opment beyond a certain point ; and then, accord- 
ing to the course of nature, he begins to decline, 
becomes enfeebled, and finally throws off this cum- 
bersome body forever. It is a merciful arrange- 
ment of the Creator. It is a token of his infinite 
love, and not an exhibition of his wrath. It is a 
happy deliverance, and not a punishment of sin. 
It is redemption from the pow T er of corruption, and 
not a visitation of judgment. If man had never 
sinned, it w T ould have been the same. Eternal life 
could not have been realized in a material body. He 
would of necessity have been imprisoned in this 
natural world. He could never have ascended to 
heaven, nor could he have explored the universe 
of God. He would have clanked the chains of 
physical bondage forever. 

God created man for the enjoyment of eternal 
life begun in the material body, progressively de- 
veloped in the spiritual world and completed amid 
the glory of the heavens. Step by step he rises, 



90 Progressive Thought 

as little by little he overcomes his evils and becomes 
receptive of good and truth from the Lord. And 
when his reformation is complete and his regener- 
ation fully effected, man may be said to have risen 
from the dead, made alive again by the power of 
God. " Blessed and holy is he that hath part in 
the first resurrection ; for over such the second 
death hath no power." (Rev. xx. 6.) "This is 
life eternal, that they might know thee the only 
true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." 
(John xvii. 3.) We know God when we love Him, 
and we love Him w T hen we keep his command- 
ments and walk in his truth. "And hereby w T e do 
know that we know Him, if w r e keep his command- 
ments. He that saith, I know Him, and keepeth 
not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is 
not in him." (1 John ii. 3, 4.) Man was created 
for something infinitely better, grander, and nobler 
than could ever be realized in the material world. 
Hence, the necessity of the death of the natural 
body in order to the full enjoyment of spiritual 
life, and the high destiny that infinite Love has 
made possible in the world to come. 

God never designed man to live forever fettered 
by the hopeless bondage of natural limitations, and 
clogged by material flesh and blood. We begin 
our career in a natural body. It w r as a neces- 
sary arrangement according to the perfections of 
divine order. But it was only for a time. When 



Death and Resurrection, 91 

the purpose of its organization is accomplished, it 
is laid aside as no longer of use. Do not therefore 
imagine, when your loved ones die, that God is 
angry with you, or that in wrath He took them 
away. It is not so. If preachers tell you so, do 
not believe it. " God is love." "And having 
loved his own which were in the world, He loved 
them unto the end." (John xiii. 1.) Paul said, 
" To die is gain." And he expressed a desire to 
depart and be with Christ, which he regarded as 
far better than continued imprisonment in the 
natural body. (Phil. i. 21-23.) The wise man 
said, " Better is the day of death than the day of 
one's birth." Peter called it the " putting off this 
my tabernacle," and Paul contrasted it with our 
spiritual body, which he terms " a house not mada 
with hands, eternal in the heavens." (2 Cor. v. 1 ; 
2 Peter i. 14.) 

Having shown what is understood by death in 
the Scriptures, and that the dissolution of the 
natural body is not the result of transgression, but 
a wise and merciful provision of Divine Provi- 
dence, we come now to consider the resurrection 
of our spiritual body. The Apostle says : " There 
is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body." 
(1 Cor. xv. 44.) " There are celestial bodies, and 
bodies terrestrial." (Ver. 40.) That is, heavenly 
bodies and earthly bodies. The earthly is that 
which w r e now have. The heavenly is that which 



9 2 Progressive Th o uyli t. 

we shall have when we pat off the earthly, if our 
inner life is heavenly. Hence that was not first 
which is spiritual, but that which is natural ; after- 
wards that which is spiritual. Therefore he says, 
" Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of 
God ; neither can corruption inherit incorruption." 
Every one knows that this material body is cor- 
ruptible, and that it turns to corruption. 

We need not, therefore, speculate as to how this 
body, when dissolved and mingled with the ele- 
ments, is to be raised up ; for it has returned to 
dust forever. It has accomplished its mission, and 
we shall need it no more. Something infinitely 
better is in store for us. God has given us an in- 
destructible, incorruptible, spiritual body. As we 
have already seen, a material body would be a 
useless, cumbersome burden in the spiritual world. 
There is no such thing in the heavens, and never 
can be. It would be impossible for God himself 
to make any better organism out of material sub- 
stances than He has made in the construction of 
our natural body. Hence, if a material body were 
needed in the other world, God would have made 
this immortal. And then it ought to be apparent 
to every intelligent person that it would be impos- 
sible to construct a spiritual organism out of a 
natural body. The Creator does not evolve spirit 
from matter ; nor does He create spiritual things 
from material elements. " That which is born of 



Death and Resurrection. 93 

the flesh is flesh ; and that which is born of the 
Spirit is spirit." (John iii, 6.) Flesh is never made 
into spirit, nor is that which is spiritual ever trans- 
formed into that which is natural. A uniform 
system of divine order marks every department 
of the Creator's operations throughout the illimit- 
able universe. He never deviates from his own 
established laws of order. The spiritual body is 
no part of the natural body. Upon the hypothesis 
that it is, what particular part of the natural does 
the spiritual take on? In the name of reason, tell 
me what part of this poor body of corruption 
does the spiritual take on? In what department 
of these natural elements lies the spiritual germ ? 
Is there a man in all Israel that can answer this 
question ? What part of this corruptible body is 
used in the construction of a spiritual body? Do 
not evade the question by hiding behind an as- 
sumed mystery. This word " mystery " is a won- 
derful scapegoat to bear away the false subterfuges 
of an irrational and unphilosophical theology. It 
eclipses the renowned goat of Masonry altogether, 
as a mere creation of the fancy. Upon the hy- 
pothesis that the spiritual is made from the natural 
body, the spiritual must itself become material; in 
which case there would be no advancement on the 
part of man, but in reality retrogression on God's 
part, and a subversion of his own divine order. 
No: the earthly passes away to give place to the 



94 Progressive Thought. 

heavenly. The natural dies and the spiritual is res- 
urrected. The one is for time, the other for eternity. 
The one was designed to be taken down and re- 
moved like the Jewish Tabernacle, the other to 
remain as a permanent abode, symbolized by the 
Temple at Jerusalem. The natural was typified 
by the first covenant, which, being only of an ex- 
ternal character, was designed to serve a given 
purpose for a time and then be done away with 
forever. The spiritual was symbolized by the new 
covenant, w T hich, being internal, was to continue 
eternal and unchangeable. So the spiritual body 
is indestructible, and hence immortal, and there- 
fore not material. It is adapted to the spiritual 
world as the natural body is fitted for the mate- 
rial world. It is the everlasting house of the soul, 
eternal in the heavens. It is the clothing of the 
spirit, that which gives it form and substance. It 
is the undying spiritual organism through which 
the spirit performs its functions in the spiritual 
world. Here the soul is hampered, and it is im- 
possible to bring this natural body into harmony 
with the laws of spiritual life, so that it shall carry 
out in every particular the desires of the mind 
and fulfill the purposes of the soul. We will to 
be with our distant kindred ; but, encumbered as 
we are with a material body, we are of necessity 
subject to the limitations of time and space. It 
may be we can go to them ; but to do so, a jour- 



Death and Resurrection, 95 

ney, sometimes through thousands of miles and 
many weary days and nights, has to be endured. 
To the spiritual body there are no such limitations ; 
no hindrances or obstructions. On the wings of 
thought we can traverse the universe, and never 
weary of the journey. There are no railroad mo- 
nopolies, no extortionate rates or other obstacles 
to embarrass or hinder intercommunication be- 
tween worlds. 

God created man that he might be filled with 
the delights of His infinite love and wisdom. He 
has left nothing undone that is calculated in the 
least to enhance human happiness. As man be- 
comes receptive of his love and wisdom, he jour- 
neys back to his Father's house. A warm welcome 
awaits him on his return. He begins his home- 
ward journey here. In subduing and overcoming 
the evils of his carnal nature, he is moulding and 
fashioning his spiritual body in which he is to 
dwell forever. As the earthly food we eat is as- 
similated and goes to form and nourish these 
material bodies, so the bread from heaven, which is 
the Lord himself, or the truths of his love and 
wisdom, goes to form and nourish our spiritual 
bodies. Our spiritual bodies are all the while 
being fashioned like unto Christ's glorious body. 
They are subject to the laws of spiritual develop- 
ment as our natural bodies are subject to the laws 
of physical development. God does not make a 



96 Progressive Thought, 

material body by an arbitrary fiat of his will, nor 
does He construct a spiritual body by any such 
process. Man does not, of his own volition, move 
out of the old house until he has a new one ready 
for occupancy. So we may reasonably suppose that 
God will not allow this earthly tabernacle to be 
torn down, until He has prepared for us a better 
house — one not made with hands, eternal in the 
heavens. It would not be in accordance with the 
infinite love and wisdom of God to turn his help- 
less children out of their earthly house, as home- 
less wanderers unsheltered and unclothed, without 
form or substance, roaming in the vast immensity 
for thousands of years, alike unknowing and un- 
known, until He could get a spiritual body ready 
for them. He does not do things by halves — get- 
ting one-half of the man ready some thousands 
of years before He begins the other half. Neither 
is man divisible — a part of him in eternity's shore- 
less realm, and a part of him on earth, returned 
to dust whence he came, and scattered to the four 
winds of heaven ; and after untold ages have 
passed away, the two parts to be brought together 
again and made into one man ! 

I tell you there is nothing Godlike in such a 
proceeding. God does not do things in that way. 
He completes what He undertakes before He leaves 
it. He never leaves anything half finished. Man 
is no more divisible than God himself. We fall 



Death and Resurrection. 97 

into error on this subject by our materialistic ten- 
dencies. Everything in the Sacred Scriptures con- 
cerning our resurrection from the dead, we read 
with a materialistic idea in the mind. When the 
Lord says, "All that are in their graves shall hear 
his voice and come forth," we think of nothing 
but the material body in the tomb. And our 
thought is, that it is to rise from the grave as a 
natural yet glorified body. 

We read the 15th chapter of 1st Corinthians, 
and are confirmed in the materialistic idea of the 
resurrection. We seem unable to see anything 
else taught therein, than the literal resurrection of 
our material bodies. But we have already shown 
that a spiritual body cannot be constructed out of 
material elements, and that a material body has 
no existence in the spiritual world. That it is 
impossible, in the very nature of things, for flesh 
and blood to inherit the kingdom of God. The 
real thought is, that our natural bodies are sown 
and return to the dust whence they came, and our 
spiritual bodies are raised from the dead. The 
one is sown in corruption, the other is raised in 
incorruption. But the spiritual body is not and 
never was any part of the corruptible body. De- 
pend upon it, whenever the resurrection occurs it 
is a spiritual body that is raised. We have no 
further use for a material organism. It has been 
laid aside forever as a useless and cumbersome 
7 



98 Progressive Thought. 

burden. " That which thou sowest, thou sowest 
not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may 
chance of wheat, or of some other grain : but God 
giveth it a body as it hath pleased Him, and to 
every seed his own body." The first man, Adam, 
was made a living soul, but involved himself in 
spiritual death ; hence it is said : " The last Adam 
was made a quickening spirit;" therefore the 
Apostle says, " You hath He quickened who were 
dead in trespasses and sins ;" and again : "Awake, 
thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and 
Christ shall give thee light." There are no Scrip- 
tures, when rightly understood, which teach the 
resurrection of the material body. Besides, the 
gross literal interpretation of those passages in 
the Word that seem to teach it, has given an im- 
petus to infidel sentiments that has grown to huge 
dimensions; and for the fact that thinking men 
are constantly losing respect for the Bible as a 
Divine book, the theological teaching of the age is 
largely responsible. 

Biblical expositors have insisted on a method 
of interpretation that in many instances outrages 
reason and insults the common sense of mankind. 
A blind, unreasoning credulity characterizes the 
Christian world of to-day. Ignorance of all spir- 
itual truth prevails to a great extent. It is the 
throne of ecclesiastical tyranny and oppression. 
It is the field in which the great red dragon of the 



Death and Resurrect ion. 9 ( J 

Apocalypse feeds and fattens. External forms 
and ceremonies abound ; theories prevail, and 
creeds are multiplied. It is impossible to derive 
spiritual life from the dead husks of the literal 
interpretation of the Word. Hence the noxious 
fruits of a dead faith are often seen in the blind- 
ness of a zeal not according to knowledge, and the 
utter absence of charity from the life. Men have 
a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof. 
" They profess to know God, but in their works 
deny Him, being unto every good work reprobate." 
False ideas concerning God lead to erroneous con- 
ceptions concerning every doctrine revealed in 
the Sacred Scriptures. That of the resurrection 
forms no exception to the rule. 

Now, in conclusion, let us illustrate the absurd- 
ity of the literal materialistic idea of the subject 
before us. A man that lives to the age of seventy, 
according to modern science, has had ten bodies — 
bodies of material flesh and blood. Every day 
that he lives some particles of his body pass away 
and mingle with the elements about him. During 
his last illness most of his remaining body passes 
away. He dies, aud what is then left of that 
organic form passes away in like manner. It turns 
to dust or escapes in gases, enters into other organ- 
isms of plants, trees, and animals, passing through 
a thousand transmutations. And yet our modern 
theologian will tell you that when the last trumpet 



100 Progressive Thought. 

sounds, God will follow up each particle of those 
ten bodies, running through those thousand trans- 
mutations, and resurrect that man's material body, 
which He will glorify and spiritualize as a fit habi- 
tation for that man's spirit that passed to the great 
unknown thousands of years before. And you 
are called an infidel if you decline to believe such 
a theory — a theory in direct conflict with reason, 
science and common sense, and wholly without 
Scriptural authority. 

A few years ago, Mr. P. P. Bliss, the sweet singer, 
and his wife perished in the railroad disaster at 
Ashtabula, Ohio. The car in which they went 
down took fire, and they were burned up. Not so 
much as a bunch of keys was found to evidence 
that they ever lived. The ashes of their bodies 
were carried down the stream. Now the common 
theory is, that God will gather those particles, 
although they have all mingled with the waters of 
the river, and on the morning of the resurrection 
will reunite them to those dear souls that ascended 
to God on that fearful night. Just as though it 
were necessary for God to follow up that particular 
dust for the purpose of making another material 
body ! And if it is a spiritual body that is to be res- 
urrected, then certainly He would not search in the 
grave of corruption, nor yet in the waters of the 
river and sea, to find the elements out of which to 
construct it. 



Death and Resurrection. 101 

But that there is a spiritual body that rises out 
of the material as from a tomb, is evidenced by 
the fact that Moses and Elias who had died or cast 
off their mortal bodies centuries before, were seen 
with Christ upon the mount of transfiguration in 
human form, and in their spiritual bodies, of course, 
for they were recognized by the disciples, and they 
conversed with the Lord. In the Revelation, John 
testifies that he saw " a great multitude which no 
man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, 
and people, and tongues, who stood before the 
throne, and before the Lamb, clothed w r ith white 
robes, and palms in their hands." (Rev. vii. 9.) 
He also saw " the souls of those who had been 
martyred for the testimony of Jesus." (Ibid. xx. 4.) 
It were folly to suppose that they were mere ghosts, 
without form or substance, floating in the great 
immensity. They were complete in all the perfec- 
tion of their spiritual bodies. They were seen, not as 
naked spirits, but clothed, exercising all the mem- 
bers of their spiritual bodies, standing upon their 
feet, holding palms in their hands, and speaking with 
their tongues — which certainly could not be true 
of a phantom or a formless spirit without substance 
or parts. Of w 7 hat possible use could a material 
body be to those happy, perfect, glorified intelli- 
gences ? It would be to them like the oppressive 
gloominess of a prison-cell. It would hush every 
glad song among the angels and annihilate heav- 



102 Progressive Thought. 

enly joy among the redeemed, were they to be 
informed that they must return to the narrow con- 
fines of a material body, and be subject to the 
limitations which of necessity environ such a state 
of existence. 

Bear in mind that we do not deny the resurrec- 
tion of man from the dead, for the Scriptures 
everywhere teach the doctrine. " We have simply 
undertaken to show that what is called death in 
the Bible is spiritual death, and that man's resur- 
rection from that condition is a spiritual resurrec- 
tion both of body and soul; and hence his mate- 
rial body, being of no possible use in the spiritual 
world, is cast oif forever/' " What is the chaff to 
the wheat? saith the Lord." (Jer. xxiii. 28.) 

Let the chaff of mere human theories, specula- 
tions, and preconceived notions, with all the com- 
mandments and traditions of men, be separated 
from the true doctrine of the Word, that we may 
all be taught of God ; and being taught of Him, 
that we may walk in the light as He is in the 
light, that there may be no occasion of stumbling 
in us, but that we may stand complete in all the 
will of God, ever growing in grace and increasing 
in the knowledge of God, and in conformity to his 
will. 



V. 

THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST. 

j|HE second coming of the Lord is a subject 
on which there is a wide difference of opin- 
ion among Christians. It is regarded as v an open 
question upon which people may honestly differ. 
Those who hold that it is to occur before the mil- 
lennium are termed Premillenarians, while those 
who think that the millennium is to precede his 
coming are called Postmillenarians. The latter 
regard the thousand years' reign of Christ as spir- 
itual, consisting in the triumph of Christianity and 
the conversion of the whole world to Christ. At 
the end of the thousand years' reign, He is to come 
to this earth to execute the last judgment, raise 
the dead, welcome the righteous to heaven, send 
the wicked to hell, and burn up the material 
heavens and earth, and put an end to Time itself. 
The former hold that the Lord's coming is to pre- 
cede the millennium, and is to be in person. That 
He is to come in the literal clouds of heaven, in a 
material form, stand upon the Mount of Olives, at 
which time the mountain shall cleave in two, form- 
ing a vast plain on which the literal Jerusalem 
103 



104 Progressive Thought. 

shall be rebuilt, and that Christ is to sit literally 
on the throne of David at Jerusalem, and reign 
over the nations of the earth for a thousand years. 

One of the prime factors in this theory is " the 
restoration of the Jews." They are to be gathered 
out of all the nations of the earth, and to be 
restored to Palestine. At this time the righteous 
dead of every age and clime are to be raised from 
their graves in material bodies, and the living 
saints arje to be changed into the same condition. 
The wicked who may be living at that time are to 
be destroyed, and none of the unholy will be 
raised from the dead until after the thousand years 
expire. Then the last judgment will occur ; the 
wicked will be raised and sentenced to eternal 
death, and the righteous will ascend with Christ 
to heaven, leaving behind them the material heav- 
ens and earth wrapped in devouring flames. 

Just how the saints are to ascend to heaven in 
their material bodies has never been very satisfac- 
torily explained. It is one of the "great mys- 
teries " we are not allowed to investigate. If they 
are resurrected in material bodies, then they are 
in material organizations forever; for there is no 
Scripture warrant for believing in any change of 
the body after the resurrection. And if in mate- 
rial bodies, they must be in bodies of flesh and 
blood, and hence can never inherit the kingdom 
of God. (1 Cor. xv.) So the great mystery when 



The Second Coming of Christ. 105 

sifted is found to be contrary alike to Scripture, 
reason, and common sense. And they who hold 
this belief, look into the material heavens for the 
signs of the Lord's coming. They watch the sun, 
moon, and stars, to see them gather blackness, 
turn to blood, and fall to the earth. 

Some believe in the sleep of the soul with the 
body in the tomb, the literal resurrection of both 
body and soul at the second advent, the eternal 
annihilation of the wicked, and the everlasting 
reign of the saints upon this material globe. They 
fix the very day when the Lord is to come. This 
has been done many times. Miller fixed the time 
as long ago as 1843. He was mistaken, as many 
others have been. The Lord did not come at that 
time. A half-score days, more or less, have been 
designated since. The thing has been figured to a 
nicety. People have disposed of their w T orldly effects, 
arrayed themselves in their ascension robes, and 
stood the livelong night waiting for the Lord to 
come in the natural clouds. But He did not come. 
They were mistaken again as to time; and they 
will all find at last that they have been mistaken, 
also, as to the manner or nature of his coming. 
Depend upon it, He will never come in a material 
body, and in the literal clouds of heaven, to reign 
on a temporal throne in this material world. He 
says: "My kingdom is not of this world." (John 
xviii. 36.) It is neither material nor temporal ; 



106 Progressive Thought. : 

t 

hence all interpretations of the Scriptures concern- 
ing that event, from a temporal or material stand- 
point, are erroneous, and can never receive their 
fulfillment in that sense. 

It matters not how much Scripture may be 
quoted in confirmation of such a theory ; for, 
interpreted in its strictly literal sense, the truth can- 
not be known, falsity is confirmed, and errors are 
established. The inevitable result is to destroy 
faith in the divine authority of the Word itself. 
The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. (2 
Cor. iii. 6.) Spiritual things are spiritually dis- 
cerned. (2 Cor. ii. 14.) " It is the Spirit that 
quickeneth ; . . . the words that I speak unto you, 
they are spirit, and they are life." (John vi. 63,) It 
is by this principle of literal interpretation that 
all the errors which have infested the church for 
the last fifteen hundred years, or since the promul- 
gation of the Nicene creed (a. d. 327), have crept 
in. And in proportion as error enters, truth de- 
parts. Those things which God has separated are 
married, and those which He united are divorced. 
Thus we have an inverted condition of things by 
which falsity has the appearance of truth, and evil 
appears as good, and darkness as light ; and the 
love of self and the world is made to appear as 
good religion, even a zeal for God. The devotion 
of the people of the church at large is largely in 
the direction of external splendor, gorgeous ritu- 



The Second Coming of Christ. 107 

alism and empty formalism. It is a characteristic 
of the last days of the church that men shall have 
11 a form of godliness, but deny the power there- 
of." (2 Tim. iii. 5.) 

The various and conflicting theories which have 
given birth to the multipled creeds of men, have 
all been drawn from, and confirmed by, a low and 
sensuous interpretation of the Word. Hence the 
remark is often heard that " you can prove any- 
thing by the Bible." And so you can, taking it 
merely in the sense of the letter. And thus every 
sect in Christendom quotes passages from the Scrip- 
tures in support of its dogmas. The Scriptures 
from first to last reveal the Lord and his church. 
They reveal everywhere the unity of God and the 
oneness of his people. They neither sanction a 
division of the Godhead nor of the church. They 
reveal no multiplicity of systems. They sanc- 
tion no errors, and foster no system in conflict 
with their own beautiful harmony and with the 
sober reason of man. Understood aright, they 
are grand in conception, divine in origin, harmo- 
nious in doctrine, and luminous throughout. If 
you go deep enough beneath the surface or mere 
letter, you will find the Lord shining in the bright- 
ness of his glory, and reigning in matchless power. 
You will comprehend the nature of his kingdom, 
the spirit of his Word, the infinity of his grace, and 
the purpose of both his first and second advent. 



108 Progressive Thought. 

You will recognize his second coming in the clouds 
of heaven, as the Lord coming to you in the opened 
Word, made luminous and bright to your enlight- 
ened understanding. The clouds of heaven are 
the Divine Word in the letter, or in its most ex- 
ternal form. Coming in the clouds of heaven 
represents the opening of the Word in its internal 
or spiritual sense, by which the Lord himself is 
plainly revealed in or through the clouds of the 
letter. Thus you behold Him in his divine glory, 
and feel as never before the power of his divine 
truth. The clouds lift, and the Sun of righteous- 
ness shines in the fullness of his divine love and 
wisdom. The external opens, and Zion's peerless 
King stands disclosed in all his glory. The eter- 
nal gates of pearl swing upon their noiseless hinges, 
and the Lord sits on the great white throne, King 
of kings and Lord of lords. The Word in its 
letter reveals the jasper walls, the gates of pearl, 
the sapphire foundations garnished with all man- 
ner of precious stones, the Holy City, New Jeru- 
salem, descending from God out of heaven. The 
spiritual sense reveals w T hat is within the walls ; 
the streets of gold, the white throne and Him 
that sits upon it, the river of the water of life, the 
tree of life that yields its twelve manner of fruits, 
and whose leaves are for the healing of the nations ; 
and all the precious things of heaven and the 
church, for these are all spiritual things. He who 



Tlie Second Coming of Christ. 109 

worships the Lord Jesus Christ, and has no other 
Gods before Him, dwells within the jasper walls 
and walks the golden streets. Entering livingly 
into the spiritual sense of the Word is passing 
through the gates into the Holy City. 

Thus Jesus Christ comes the second time with- 
out sin unto salvation. He comes, not as once He 
came in lowly form, and clothed with material 
flesh, but in all the unveiled glory of his divine 
perfections, as the everlasting "fullness of Him 
who filleth all in all." Divine Love itself, He 
comes to drive enmity from the human breast. A 
Sun, He comes in the resplendent effulgence of 
divine light, to scatter the darkness of sin, error, 
and superstition. He comes to open the eyes of 
the blind; to unstop the ears of the deaf; to pour 
the oil of joy and consolation into sorrowing hearts; 
to dispel falsity ; to reveal truth ; to break every 
yoke of bondage ; to proclaim liberty throughout 
all the land to all the inhabitants thereof. 

Thus a new era dawns. A new world begins. 
A new spiritual force is abroad in the earth. 
Ignorance gives place to enlightenment ; super- 
stition, to a clearer revelation of truth ; a blind 
and unreasoning credulity, to a clear and rational 
faith. The past century has shaken up the whole 
valley of dry bones. The Spirit, like the wind, 
is blowing upon them. Bone comes to bone. 
They are being clothed with flesh. The Spirit of 



110 Progressive Thought 

God will soon enter into them, and they will stand 
upon their feet, " an exceeding great array." The 
improvements of the past hundred years have 
burst upon the world like the sun out of midnight 
darkness. The march is onward. The force is 
irresistible. It cannot be stayed. It is the Lord 
Jehovah walking in the greatness of his strength. 
The whole world is being stirred as never before. 
The nations are moved. The peoples of earth 
are aroused. They have caught the inspiration 
of freedom. They thirst for liberty. The cry is 
for knowledge. Theories no longer satisfy. Cold, 
dead abstractions are as stones in the place of 
bread. The streams of creed and dogma are 
being dried up. The hungry want bread. The 
thirsty long for the living waters. The sorrow- 
ing millions demand comfort. The cry of the weary 
and heavy-laden is for rest. The spiritual part 
of man craves nourishment. Man is in darkness, 
and needs light. He would have doubt give place 
to certainty. He would know the hitherto un- 
known. He would have the obscure made plain. 
Men are tired of generalities and guess-work, 
and demand something positive and certain. 
Theories are being tested and systems tried. 
" Revelation, science and reason form the three- 
fold test of all religious truth." All theories must 
harmonize with this, or they are not true. Any 
system in seeming harmony with Revelation, 



The Second Coming of Christ. Ill 

which is at the same time in antagonism with 
science or reason, is a system which cannot endure. 
You can prove all things true or false by this 
rule. Any theory founded on science or reason 
which is not in harmony with either the letter or 
spirit of Revelation, is also without a secure founda- 
tion. The attempt to antagonize science or reason 
with Revelation is atheistic. The effort to interpret 
Revelation in opposition to either science or 
reason is folly. The Lord Jehovah is the Author 
of them all, and the three bear their united testi- 
mony to the Divine Source w r hence they emanate. 
It is in this manner and by this rule that we are 
to " prove all things," while we " hold fast that 
which is good." Tested by this means, whole 
systems of theology that have been venerated for 
centuries, are proven to be at variance both with 
reason and science. Weighed in the balance, 
they are found wanting, and are to be set aside 
as untrue, and hence are of no further use. Reve- 
lation rightly interpreted never opposes reason 
or conflicts with science. 

This standard of interpretation will constitute 
a marked feature of the New Age, controling 
the investigation of religious truth and scientific 
research. Hitherto the growth of scientific 
knowledge has been far in advance of the acquisi- 
tions of religious knowledge. In the coming age 
the latter will keep pace with the former. They 



112 Progressive Thought. 

will go hand in hand, while reason will accompany 
them as an ever-welcome companion. The sifting 
process will go on. The chaff will be separated 
from the wheat and falsity from the truth. Man- 
kind will come more and more into the knowledge 
of the truth, and thence into freedom. Ignorance 
is bondage; enlightenment is liberty. Intellectual 
darkness is oppression's native land, while spiritual 
perversity is Satan's harvest field. The coming of 
the Lord in his opened Word will dispel the dark- 
ness, overthrow oppression, destroy perversity, 
overcome the wicked one and cast him out. Divine 
love will come more and more into the hearts of 
the people, and divine light into their understand- 
ings. A purer and closer reciprocal relation will 
exist between them. The love of self will give 
place to the love of the Lord, and the love of the 
world to that of the neighbor. Obedience to the 
commandments of God will be the law of the 
Christian's life, and the gospel of his salvation. 
It will be the way of pleasantness and the path of 
peace. He will walk in it with ever-increasing 
delight. It will grow brighter and brighter, and 
"shine more and more unto the perfect day." 
There will be continual growth in all spiritual 
attainments. " Increasing in the knowledge of 
God " will be a daily experience. The mind will 
broaden; the soul will expand; the desires enlarge 
and the whole life glow with divine love and 



The Second Coming of Christ. 113 

wisdom. Each century will become more lumin- 
ous with the light of divine truth. Each genera- 
tion will advance to higher conceptions, grander 
attainments, and fuller realizations of every divine 
excellence than its predecessor. The obstructions 
that now lie in the way will be removed. Preju- 
dice will vanish. Narrow-minded bigotry will 
pass like a cloud from off the spiritual horizon. 
The throne of ecclesiastical tyranny will be de- 
molished. Persecutions for conscience' sake will 
cease. Infidelity and skepticism will gradually 
pass away. A purer political economy will per- 
vade the nations. The conflict between labor 
and capital will be at an end. The love of money, 
which is said to be " the root of all evil," will be 
supplanted by the love of use. Worldly gain will 
no longer be the chief end and aim of life. The 
various relations existing between the human 
family will be harmoniously adjusted according to 
the divine standard of right. The oppressor will 
oppress no more. The poor will no longer be 
antagonized against the rich. The rich will be 
poorer in this world's goods, but infinitely richer in 
heavenly acquisitions. The condition of the poor 
will be bettered in every respect. No man will 
suffer for the necessaries of life. Harrowing care 
and anxiety will no longer weigh upon the spirit. 
Human woes will lessen as divine benedictions 
descend in showers of blessing upon the people. 



114 Progressive Thought 

The love of truth will increase. The appetite for 
spiritual food will be stimulated more and more 
as time rolls on. Evil desires will gradually be 
subdued. The weak will receive strength. The 
tempted will overcome. The fallen will be lifted 
up. The wanderer will be restored. The friend- 
less will have friends. The outcasts will be 
gathered in. The ignorant will be instructed. 
The whole earth will see the salvation of our God, 
and man will love the Lord with all his heart 
and his neighbor as himself. The narrow limits 
of religious bigotry are already being passed. 
The proscriptiveness of ecclesiastical intolerance 
is a characteristic of a dead church. This will 
have no place in the church of the future. New 
views of truth will open up in endless progression. 
The dead will be left to bury their dead. The liv- 
ing as they go will proclaim the kingdom of God. 
That kingdom will be within them. Man will 
not only be in the church, but the church will be 
in him. Theory will give place to practice ; words 
to deeds; professions to actualities; and assump- 
tions to practical demonstrations. 

The Scriptures everywhere abound in declara- 
tions concerning the coming of this Church. It 
is called the millennium ; the second coming of 
the Lord ; the reign of a thousand years ; the 
Holy City, New Jerusalem, descending from God 
out of heaven. 



The ISecond Coming of Christ. 115 

The glimmerings of the coming day are plainly 
discernible. The signs of his advent are fulfilled. 
The night of error and falsity has darkened the 
sun in the heavens. The moon has refused to give 
her light, and the stars have fallen from heaven 
to the earth, in the perversion of holy truth, the 
confirmation of error, and the aggrandizement of 
self and sect. The abomination that maketh des- 
olate, foretold in Daniel xii. 11, was actually set 
up in the year A. d. 467, under Pope Simplicius, 
and fully established under Anastasius II., A. d. 
497. 

" Up to 467, the first forty-five successors of St. 
Peter were chosen by the laity and clergy together. 
The voice of the laity in the choice of a Pope ends 
here, and the abomination begins. In the year 
497, church and state are fully one, and the abom- 
ination is made permanent. Henceforth the free- 
dom of the laity either to think or act in religious 
matters, is obliterated." " The destruction of the 
true idea of the Divine unity and the division of 
the Godhead into three distinct Persons, by which 
the supreme Divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ is 
obliterated from the mind, is the abomination of 
desolation spoken of by Daniel, and which received 
its full and firm establishment in the year 497." 
"This was the last year of the reign of Pope 
Anastasius, and the beginning of an era of 1260 
years of mental and spiritual darkness, and of 



116 Progressive Thought. 

ecclesiastical tyranny and oppression, without a 
parallel in history ; and which, according to the 
chronological record of Daniel, ended A. d. 1757." 

Who cannot see what a marked change has 
transpired in our world since that date? The 
union of church and state no longer exists except 
to a very limited extent. The march of the na- 
tions has been toward freedom from mental bond- 
age and religious oppression. Old theories are 
exploded. Venerated customs are abolished. Bonds 
are sundered, shackles struck off, and manacles 
rent asunder. The doctrine of three Persons in 
God is rbjected, and the Supreme Divinity of our 
Lord Jesus Christ is again proclaimed from many 
pulpits, and scattered by the press like autumn 
leaves over the earth. 

Almost simultaneously with the ending of the 
abomination spoken of above, and the promulga- 
tion of the true doctrine of the Lord, the won- 
derful era of improvements in the arts and sci- 
ences and in the general diffusion of knowledge 
began. More has been done in a century than in 
the eighteen hundred years preceding. Many 
now living can remember when there were no 
steamboats, when the use of steam was wholly 
unknown. Most of us in middle life can remem- 
ber the birth of railroads, telegraphs, aud the 
various uses of electricity, ocean cables, telephones, 
and the thousand and one improvements in every 



The Second Coming of Christ. 117 

department of life. People have often wondered 
why all these things have developed within the 
last hundred years. They have not known that it 
was the beginning of a New Age, the commence- 
ment of a New Dispensation ; nor have they un- 
derstood the relation which the ending of the 
abomination in 1 757, sustains to what we see around 
us to-day. Those who are spiritually blind cannot 
see, and those who are ignorant cannot understand 
that relation, nor the significance of its import. 
Now T , as formerly, " the light shines in darkness, 
but the darkness comprehends it not." As the 
Jews knew not the Lord at his first advent, so the 
professing church in its many confirmed errors 
and its perversions of truth, will not know Him at 
his second coming. And as He then came in a 
different manner or character from what the Jews 
expected, so will He come the second time in a 
manner that the mass of Christians have not been 
looking for. Our notions and theories will so blind 
us that we will not recognize Him at his coming, 
or comprehend the time of our visitation. Many 
are afraid to open their eyes for fear they will see. 
They dare not investigate, because they think 
investigation may compel a surrender of some 
cherished dogma. Evidently, they would rather 
the Lord would delay his coming, than that He 
should come in a different manner from what they 
have been expecting. 



118 Progressive Thought. 

" Future events recorded in prophetic Scripture 
can never be understood until they are fulfilled. 
Hence the fulfillment of prophecy is God's inter- 
pretation of it to the church. Here all the mis- 
takes have been made in endeavoring to explain 
the Apocalypse. Men have assumed to foretell 
events, and fix times in their interpretation of this 
prophecy, and also that of Daniel, and thus them- 
selves become prophets/' But until the fulfill- 
ment came, it was impossible to comprehend the 
meaning of those prophecies. The restored knowl- 
edge of the one God and Saviour, our Lord Jesus 
Christ, is the key that unlocks all the infinite treas- 
ures of wisdom contained in the spiritual sense 
of the Word, by which we may know that the 
night of a corrupted Christianity is ended, and 
that the morning of a new revelation of spiritual 
truth has already dawned upon the world. 

Sir Isaac Newton, on the book of Revelation, 
says : " For it is a part of this prophecy that it 
should not be understood before the last age of 
the world. And therefore it makes for the credit 
of the prophecy that it is not yet understood. The 
folly of interpreters has been to foretell times and 
things by this prophecy; as if God designed to 
make them prophets. By this rashness, they have 
not only exposed themselves, but brought the 
prophecy also into contempt. The design of God was 
much otherwise. He gave this and the prophecies 



The Second Coming of Christ 119 

of the Old Testament not to gratify men's curios- 
ity by enabling them to foreknow things, but that 
after they were fulfilled, they might be interpreted 
by the event, and his own Providence, not the 
interpreter's, be then manifested to the world. For 
the event of things predicted many ages before, 
will then be a convincing argument that tne world 
is governed by Providence. For as the few and 
obscure prophecies concerning Christ's first coming 
were for setting up the Christian religion which 
all nations have since corrupted ; so the many and 
clear prophecies concerning the things to be done 
at Christ's second coming, are not only for predict- 
ing, but also for effecting a recovery and re-estab- 
lishment of the long-lost truth, and setting up a 
kingdom wherein dwells righteousness. The event 
will prove the Apocalypse, and this prophecy thus 
proved and understood, will open the old prophets, 
and altogether make known the true religion and 
establish it." 

Now, in the Apocalypse revealed and in the 
spiritual sense of the Word made known, we be- 
hold the Lord in his coming, shining out from 
every page of the Sacred Scriptures like the light- 
ning which shineth from one part of heaven unto 
the other. " It is the great and terrible day of 
the Lord " to all man-invented" schemes,"to all false 
assumptions, and erroneous systems, and human self- 
hood, and pride, and arrogance, and vain-glory, 



120 Progressive Thought 

and ecclesiastical hierarchies, and sectarian Babels, 
and denominational aggrandizement. It means 
the downfall of Babylon. Her time of judg- 
ment is at the Lord's coming. It is a terrible 
day to the beast, and the false prophet, and the 
great red dragon. The time of their judgment is 
come, and their overthrow is the redemption of 
the Lord's people and the establishment of his 
kingdom among men. 

The light of the Holy City, New Jerusalem, 
descending out of heaven from God, will more and 
more scatter the darkness, and enlighten the na- 
tions of the earth with the effulgent glory of the 
Divine Love and Wisdom. It is, as yet, but the 
early daw r n of a morning never to be succeeded 
by the darkness of another night. It is the begin- 
ning of an Age without end. It is immortality 
bursting mortal confines. It is the knowledge, and 
light, and love, and power of truth, reduced to 
practice, and operating in all the transactions and 
relations of life. It is the living embodiment of 
the commandments practically obeyed among men 
on earth as among the angels in heaven. It is 
the commencement of the " new heaven and the 
new earth" in which dwells righteousness, and from 
which all unrighteousness is excluded forever. In 
short, it is the coming of the Lord. " Even so, 
come, Lord Jesus." Amen. 



VI. 

THE JUDGMENT DAY. 



jlHO that has any memory of early childhood, 
does not remember the inexpressible fear 
and dread with which he was wont to listen to the 
awful scenes to be enacted at the last General 
Judgment. On a fixed day the whole human race, 
living and dead, were to be summoned before the 
judgment bar of an angry God, and pass through 
the legal form of a trial, not in mass, but each one 
separately, and be adjudged to heaven or to hell 
as the case might be. Love had turned to wrath, 
and the Saviour himself had become the unmerci- 
ful Judge, to pass the final sentence of everlasting 
death upon all save the elect, consigning them to 
the prison-house of an eternal burning hell. All 
the dead, from Adam to the end of time, were to 
be raised, and together with all who should be liv- 
ing on earth at that period, to be assembled in one 
vast congregation summoned to judgment. The 
stars of heaven were to fall to the earth, the moon 
was to turn to blood, and the sun to become black 
as sackcloth of hair. The whole material universe 
was to be destroyed, and the earth and everything 
in it was to be burned up. 
121 



122 Progressive Thought 

All the Scriptures speaking of these things were 
interpreted in the strictly literal sense. And yet, 
in the light of the revelations of science, who that 
is well informed does not see the absurdity of such 
interpretations ? It was taught and sacredly be- 
lieved that all the stars of the illimitable heavens 
were actually to fall upon this little globe of ours. 
That they were as countless in number as the sand 
upon the seashore made no difference, so great was 
the credulity of the people. The Bible said they 
were to fall to the earth, and that was enough. 
Science tells us that the planet Jupiter, for instance, 
is nine hundred times larger than our earth ; that 
is, that its dimensions are equal to 900 globes like 
this rolled into one. And yet it was to fall like 
the dropping of a fig to the ground. How utterly 
contrary to all reason and science are such inter- 
pretations of the Sacred Scriptures ! They show 
the necessity of knowing not only what the Bible 
says, but also what it means. Its real sense does 
not lie on the surface, nor is it to be found in the 
mere letter. If it has no internal sense, and is 
designed to convey no meaning but what appears 
in. its external form of expression, it lacks the 
stamp of infinity and the seal of God's authorship. 
But interpreted according to the science of cor- 
respondences and the glory is unveiled, the appa- 
rently unreasonable statements become reasonable, 
the seemingly conflicting portions are harmonized, 



The Judgment Day. 123 

symbolism becomes an understood, beautiful, and 
eloquent language, and the Lord appears in its 
opened pages as coming in the clouds of heaven. 

So those Scriptures wherein the attendant cir- 
cumstances of the Judgment Day are described, 
when rightly understood, convey no such meaning 
as has been supposed. There will be no literal 
destruction of this material earth. There will be 
no falling of the stars of heaven, nor will the 
moon turn to blood, nor will the sun become 
black in the sense in which this language has 
been commonly understood. The man who thinks 
there w r ill be, because he finds such statements 
in the Scriptures, does not understand the mean- 
ing of the Scriptures, and heeds not the revela- 
tions of science ; and so, if he attempts to teach 
spiritual truth, he becomes " a blind leader of 
the blind." 

People form their ideas of God from themselves. 
They think of his justice according to their 
notions of justice, which are often tinctured with 
somewhat of vengeance or revenge; and finding so 
often in the Bible, wrath, anger, vengeance, indig- 
nation, destruction and punishment predicated of 
God, they naturally think these terms applicable 
to Him in the same sense in which they are 
understood when applied to themselves. People 
were once (and many are still) accustomed to 
ascribe all their sufferings to God, and to speak of 



124 Progressive Thought. 

them as though sent of Him as a punishment for 
their sins. Such is not the real, though it is the 
apparent, truth. And this explains why so much, 
especially of the Old Testament, contains those 
particular forms of expression. It is impossible 
for God to be actuated by anger, or hatred, or 
revenge, in the sense in which we understand 
these terms. " God is Love."' Hence everything 
He does must be in harmony with this essential 
element of his character. 

It is necessary that we distinguish between ap- 
parent truth and real truth. It is an apparent 
truth that the sun rises and sets, and in common 
speech we so express it.; yet every intelligent 
person knows that it is truth only in appearance, 
and not in reality. It is an apparent truth that 
God drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden of 
Eden ; but it is true only in appearance ; for the 
real truth is that they turned themselves out of 
the Eden state by their own acts. We rebel 
against God, violate his laws, and suffer the effects 
of that violation ; and our sufferings seem to be a 
visitation of the Lord's wrath for our disobedience. 
Yet the Lord has not changed one iota in his feel- 
ings toward us. It is impossible that He should, 
for He is unchangeable. We turn away from God, 
and suffer, and our sufferings seem to be a punish- 
ment for our sins. When we return to Him the 
suffering ends, and we think God is then pro- 



The Judgment Day. 125 

pitious, when, in fact, the only change has been 
in ourselves. 

I dwell at length upon this point, for it is neces- 
sary that this distinction between truth and the 
appearance of truth be clearly established in the 
mind ; otherwise we shall fall into very erroneous 
notions concerning God, and hence diverge far 
from the truth in our understanding of what 
transpires on the Judgment Day. It is generally 
understood that there is to be an individual and a 
general judgment. The common theory is, that 
a sort of individual judgment takes place at death, 
so far as the soul is concerned, by which all go 
at once to heaven or hell, according to the de- 
cisions of that judgment. And yet this first judg- 
ment is not final ; for when time ends and the dead 
are raised, then these souls that have been once 
passed upon are to be summoned from heaven and 
hell, to enter once more their resurrected bodies, 
and arrayed in those material organisms are to 
receive their final sentence. 

But it seems utterly devoid of reason that people 
who have been for thousands of years either in 
heaven or hell, should be called thence to be re- 
judged and sentenced over again. As though the 
omniscient One failed to comprehend to a certainty 
just where the unnumbered millions of human 
souls belonged, whether in heaven or hell ; or as 
though some mistake had been made on their 



126 Progressive Thought 

entrance into the eternal world. I fail to see 
anything characteristic of infinite wisdom in such 
an arrangement. Of course, the theory is largely 
based upon the idea of the resurrection of these 
material bodies. As the bodies and souls of men 
sinned together, so, it is thought, they must be 
punished together ; hence the necessity of a second 
judgment, that a reunion may be effected between 
each soul and its own body. But the whole 
theory is as unscriptural as it is unreasonable. 

The judgment is no arbitrary infliction of the 
Divine displeasure. Every human being is ex- 
amined after he enters the spiritual world, as to 
his quality; and his destiny is determined accord- 
ing to the quality of his ruling love, or according 
as he has obeyed or disobeyed the truth that has 
been made known to him. The deeds men per- 
form in the body (together with the motives from 
which they do them), form the quality of life 
according to which they appear in the spiritual 
world. Hence every man receives according to 
his deeds, and is judged according to his works. 
Such as are wholly confirmed in evil, and love 
only a life of sin, go to their own place. There is 
no place for them outside of hell. That is the only 
place where they would feel at home. Heaven 
is not a place where the doors are opened to admit 
some, while others who would enter are excluded. 
It is a state of being. It is a state of purity, and 



The Judgment Day. 127 

the impure could not breathe its atmosphere. It is 
a condition of holiness, and the unholy could not 
live in such a country. It is the realm of absolute 
truth, and whosoever loveth or maketh a lie cannot 
enter or abide there without intense suffering. It is 
the kingdom of love ; hence such as are actuated 
by the passion of hate, could not enter it. 

As men hate God and love sin, they turn away 
from heaven and set their faces toward hell. And 
when they finally get there, they have simply 
reached their own country. God does not force 
people either into heaven or hell. It is impossible 
that He should do so and not interfere with the 
freedom of man's volition. As He does not arbi- 
trarily compel men to be saved, so in like manner 
He does not compel them to be damned. Men 
must, of their own free will, repent, turn to God, 
and live ; or they must continue in impenitence, 
turn away from God, and die. 

" God is love," and that love shines equally for 
all ; for He is no respecter of persons, but when 
men choose darkness rather than light, He will 
not force them to come to Him, or to abide in the 
light of his love. Arbitrary force does not change 
character. The real judgment of each individual 
is continually going on, and is formed or entered up 
before he enters the spiritual world. This is what 
the Lord means when He says that his Word shall 
judge us at the last day. 



128 Progressive Thought. 

"Every man's mind is the book in which is 
recorded all the thoughts, words and deeds of his 
w 7 hole life." These things constitute the quality 
of his soul, and determine the nature of his future 
existence. The final decision of his ruling love 
writes out the sentence of life or death, of salva- 
tion or damnation ; hence it is for each of us to 
make his sentence what he will, for all our actions 
proceed from the will ; and if we find ourselves in 
hell at last, it is not the Lord who has sent us 
there. We are there by our own volition. This 
is what Christ meant when He said to the Jews : 
"Ye will not come to me that ye might have 
life." Christ came, " that they might have life 
[the truly human life], and that they might have 
it more abundantly;" but He could not by arbi- 
trary force compel them to receive it. Anything 
that destroys the freedom of volition, blots out the 
man, or takes away every essential quality that 
lifts him above or distinguishes him from the 
brute creation. In this world, by the use of moral 
agencies, while the man is in equilibrium between 
good and evil, truth and falsity, or heaven and 
hell, the will may be influenced by good against 
evil, by truth against falsity, so as to enable it to 
overcome the latter, and so come into harmony 
with the former, and thus into heaven at last. 
But when evil is fully and finally confirmed in a 
man, he cannot be reached by good ; and hence is 



The Judgment Day. 129 

eternally in hell. And so when falsity has re- 
ceived its final and full confirmation, man can 
never again be reached by the truth, and cannot, 
therefore, be saved ; for salvation is in the truth 
absolutely, and never without it. But no man is 
sent to hell by any arbitrary decree, or pre- 
destined, prearranged, foreordained arrangement 
of the Almighty. 

God sends no one to hell. He wills the death 
of no one. " For as I live," saith the Lord, " I 
have no pleasure in the death of the wicked ; but 
that the wicked turn from his evil way and live." 
Hence He says, " Turn ye, turn ye, from your evil 
ways ; for why will ye die, O house of Israel ? " 
(Ezek. xxxiii. 11.) " Let the wicked forsake his 
way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts : and 
let him return unto the Lord, and He will have 
mercy upon him ; and to our God, for He will abun- 
dantly pardon." (Isa. lv. 7.) " Come unto me, all 
ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give 
you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of 
me; for I am meek and lowdy in heart; and ye 
shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is 
easy, and my burden is light," (Matt. xi. 28, 30.) 

From first to last, the Gospel voices God's love 
to men. That love shines like the light of the sun 
for the whole w r orld of mankind. It never changes 
into wrath or hate. The inmost essence of God 
is love. It is immutable and unchangeable. No 
9 



130 Progressive Thought 

angry passions rankle in the Divine bosom. " He 
would have all men to be saved, and come to the 
knowledge of the truth." (1 Tim. ii. 4.) His 
judgment is always according to the truth. That 
judgment is, that those who repent of their sins 
by ceasing to commit them, and who turn to Him 
with a full purpose of heart, shall live ; and that 
those who will not repent, but purposely continue in 
their sins, and thus refuse to acknowledge the Lord, 
shall lose the true life, or die. " Sin, w T hen it is 
finished, bringeth forth death." (James i. 15.) 
They die because they choose death rather than 
life. And they go to hell finally, not by the 
Lord's decree, but by their own election. A con- 
firmed life in sin, and an existence in hell, are in- 
separably conjoined. It is thought by some that 
the Lord, in the exercise of his mercy, will finally 
deliver such and raise them to heaven. But how 
can He ? His mercy does in time all that is pos- 
sible to be done, while men have the power to 
co-operate with Him and be saved. But wdien 
they are wholly confirmed in evil and falsity, their 
power of co-operation is gone, and gone forever. 
Hence there would be no way for the Lord to 
reach them but by arbitrary force. And suppose 
He v/ere to force them into heaven, they would 
plunge quickly into hell, for they could not endure 
the love, and light, and purity, and truth of the 
heavenly state. 



The Judgment Day. 131 

The judgment of each individual, therefore, 
takes place .when he enters the spiritual world, 
and every one is then and there examined as to 
his quality, and afterwards ascends to heaven, or 
descends to hell, according as he is found to be in 
the love of evil and falsity, or of truth and good. 
And the day in which this examination takes place 
is each individual's judgment day. When man 
enters heaven it is forever. When he enters hell 
it is the same. "It is a state and condition of be- 
ing, formed in the one case by the reception of 
the truth and a life according to the command- 
ments, and in the other by the rejection of the 
truth and a life according to falsity. But before 
entering either heaven or hell, all are for a 
time in the world of spirits, which is an inter- 
mediate state — a state midway between heaven 
and hell, where this judgment is effected.'' " Many 
who are good at heart, but have been wrongly in- 
structed in the world and are filled with errors 
which they thought to be truth, and who are en- 
compassed w T ith false notions and theories, are, 
when instructed by the angels, divested of all these 
things, and receiving the truth gladly, go to 
heaven/ ' Hence comes the salvation of all men 
in every nation who fear God and work righteous- 
ness, for God says all such are accepted of Him. 
(Acts x. 35.) " They love righteousness and truth, 
and worship God according to the light they have. 



132 Progressive Thought. 

There are such in every nation on the globe to-day. 
Vast multitudes who never heard of Christ as He 
is revealed to us, will be instructed in the spiritual 
world and be saved. So far as they know God 
they worship Him ; and since Christ is God, they 
really worship Christ, although they never heard 
of that name." Many w T ho have been wont to sigh 
over the poor heathen, if they do not square their 
own lives by the commandments, will see at last 
those same heathen going into the Kingdom, and 
they themselves thrust out. (Matt. xxi. 31 ; 
Luke xiii. 28.) Is it reasonable to suppose that 
God will consign the vast majority of mankind 
to the eternal damnation of hell without any 
hearing or examination whatever ? Is it consist- 
ent with our notions of justice ? And if men are 
to be heard, or if they are to be examined, where 
shall such hearing or examination take place, if 
not in the intermediate state? It certainly does 
not take place fully (though it may partially) in 
this world, and it cannot be accomplished in heaven 
or hell. Every man has a right to be heard, even 
before an earthly tribunal, and the law of no 
civilized country condemns him without a hearing. 
How much more, then, before a tribunal of divine 
and impartial justice? 

Millions of the human family are constantly 
going into the spiritual world who never had an 
opportunity in this world to learn anything about 



The Judgment Day. 133 

God or divine truth as revealed in the Word. 
The common belief is that all such must be 
damned. Damned for not knowing what it was 
impossible for them to learn ? and for not believ- 
ing in a name they never heard of, and to learn 
of which they never had any opportunity? The 
idea is preposterous. If the popular theory of 
the atonement be true, that Christ did really suf- 
fer the penalty due to the sins of the whole w T orld, 
then every lost one of those heathen nations ought 
in justice to be saved. For where is the justice 
in damning those poor ignorant heathen when 
Christ has paid their debt and purchased redemp- 
tion for them? One thing is certain, no injustice 
will be inflicted on any one by the Lord. 

Now, as to the general judgment, there have 
been several since the creation of man. They 
have always occurred in the spiritual world, at 
the end or consummation of a church on earth. 
The first general judgment was at the end of the 
Adamic Church, and it transpired in the spiritual 
world at the period of Noah's flood, which was the 
end of that world, or the consummation of the 
Adamic Church. Falsity and sin in every form 
had overwhelmed and extinguished every vestige 
of the original glorious church, when for a long 
period men lived and walked in open communion 
with the angels of heaven, and in mutual love 
and fellowship. Divine love kindled the holy 



134 Progressive Thought. 

fire of affection in their wills, and Divine wisdom 
shed heavenly light into their understandings, 
and they ate freely of the fruit of the Tree of Life, 
and drank of the river of God's pleasure that 
flowed uninterruptedly through the sacred Eden 
in which they dwelt. This was the morning of 
the first church on earth. But it had its noon, 
its evening, and reached its consummation or end 
amid the darkness and gloom of a terrible night, 
when it was overwhelmed by the destructive 
agencies of the flood — a flood of desolating falsity. 
This was the final judgment of that church. It 
was the end of the Antediluvian world. 

A new church was founded by Noah and his 
posterity, and the last judgment of that church 
occurred when it had declined from the righteous- 
ness proclaimed by its founder, until it became 
swallowed up in idolatry, and was dispersed. 
This church flourished in Asia, and to some ex- 
tent in Africa. At its termination, another age 
had ended. Then was formed the church of the 
Israelites under Moses, by the proclamation of 
the Decalogue from Mount Sinai. This church 
was consummated at the time of our Lord's first 
advent, when the Jews were dispersed among the 
nations of the earth. This was the last judgment 
of that church. 

In each and every case the consummation was 
reached amid the impenetrable darkness of spirit- 



The Judgment Day. 135 

ual night. In each case the heavens gathered 
blackness, the stars of heaven fell to the earth, 
the sun became darkened, and the moon withdrew 
her light, according to the true spiritual signifi- 
cance of these expressions. All these natural 
phenomena (or what appear as such according to 
the letter of Scripture) signify the obscuration of 
heavenly light, the perversion of good, the adul- 
teration of truth, the confirmation of falsity, and 
the corruption of worship by idolatry. The last 
judgment of the present Christian dispensation is 
described by John in Rev., 20th chapter, and the 
creation of new heavens and a new earth, which 
means a new church in the spiritual world and on 
earth, described in Rev., 21st chapter. 

We are now in the evening twilight of the 
Christian Church, founded by Christ and his 
apostles, and at the same time in the morning 
twilight of a New Church signified by the new 
heavens and the new earth, described by John. 
Our Lord Jesus Christ is about to make all things 
new. The shadows will depart, but the substance 
will remain. The chaff will be burned up, but 
the wheat will be gathered into God's barn. The 
tares will be bundled into the fire, but truth and 
good will be saved. The dark clouds of error 
will be dispersed, but the bright effulgence of the 
Sun of righteousness will burst forth in unwonted 
splendor, even as seven days in one, in the day 



136 Progressive Thought 

when the Lord shall bring again Zion. The sun 
shall no more be clothed in blackness, nor shall 
the moon refuse to give her light. No more shall 
the stars of heaven fall to the earth, or the powers 
of the heavens be shaken. The tribulation of 
those days once passed, it is gone forever. The 
consummation of each successive church has 
been accomplished in the night, when the 
vision has been obscured by darkness, so that 
spiritual truth is no longer seen; when evils of 
every kind have corrupted good, and falsities have 
adulterated truth ; when the stars of heaven have 
fallen to the earth (or the knowledges of divine 
things fallen out of men's minds), and the powers 
of the heavens have been shaken by the defilement 
of heavenly affections, and the divorcement of 
celestial graces. But of the church that is to be, 
it is said, " there shall be no night there." Those 
that have been, have ended and passed away ; but 
that which is to come shall not end, but shall stand 
forever. 



^^^^^ 



VII. 

LOVE TO GOD, AND CHARITY TOWARD THE 
NEIGHBOR, THE PRIME ESSENTIALS OF 
CHRISTIANITY. 

HAT are the essentials of the Christian 
religion? What is its sum and substance? 
Our Lord has himself answered this question in a 
manner sufficiently explicit. In one of the Gospels 
it is written : " Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt 
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and 
with all thy soul, and with all thy mind: This is 
the first and great commandment. And the 
second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments 
hang all the Law and the Prophets. ,, (Matt. xxii. 
37-40.) 

Christianity does not consist in external forms 
and ceremonies, as the saying of prayers, giving 
alms, attending church services, submitting to 
ordinances, subscribing creeds, and talking pious- 
ly. These are no part of it, though they may all 
be incidentally connected with it. But when we 
imagine that we are Christians because we do 
these things, w 7 e practice upon ourselves a fatal 
deception. We may be closely observant of every 
external form of an avowed religious belief, and 
137 



138 Progressive Thought 

never know the first principle of Christianity, or 
possess one iota of the Spirit. 

And right here is where multitudes deceive 
themselves oftener and more successfully than they 
do their fellow-men. Piety that consists merely 
in the punctilious observance of certain external 
rites, has often been weighed in the balances of 
just and righteous dealing, and as often has been 
found wanting. And if it is found wanting in the 
exteriors of life, it certainly has no existence in 
the interiors of the man. Because, from a variety of 
motives, one may be above suspicion as to his Chris- 
tian exteriors, and yet be utterly wanting as to the 
quality of his interiors — and the interiors consti- 
tute the real man. People are not always what 
they seem ; that is, the externals observed of men 
are not always in correspondence with the internal 
thoughts and purpose. 

Hence every person has an outward and an in- 
ward existence, an exterior and an interior. But 
it is the interior that decides the quality, and is 
the source whence all externals take their rise. 
An impure motive lying deeply hidden within the 
internals of the man or woman, may, and often 
does, assume the externals of purity and seeming 
good intent; and so the outwardly good actions 
appear very different when the evil motive is 
known from which they sprang. This is never 
oftener seen than in the verbal professions of piety. 



The Essentials of Christianity 139 

By such professions the most unworthy often in- 
gratiate themselves into the confidence of good 
people, who, being pure in heart themselves, are 
slow to suspect a wrong intent in others. The re- 
sult is, that there is a large element in all the 
churches who use religious profession as a means 
for the accomplishment of unworthy ends. Self- 
interest, either in a social, business, or profes- 
sional line, lies concealed underneath it all. 
Hence it is a hollow mockery and a sham. 
However fair the exterior, the interior is full of 
all uncleanness and iniquity. Ever and anon the 
mask is laid aside, or torn off by circumstances, 
and the real man stands revealed in some immo- 
rality, crime, or fraudulent transaction, to the 
grief of the church, the scandal of religion, and 
the scorn and derision of all honest people. 

The low and sensuous standard of Biblical in- 
terpretation has fostered this state of things. The 
Word in its literal sense relates to externals only ; 
and doctrines derived thence, seldom go deeper 
than the outward forms of piety. The Jewish 
nation was never more absolutely perfect in its 
observance of all the outward forms of religion 
than at our Lord's advent, when it was wanting 
in all the essentials of interior righteousness. It 
was completely devastated and its end had come. 
It was for this reason that the preaching of Christ 
was such a terrible rebuke to the prevalent relig- 



140 Progressive Thought 

ious notions and theories of his day. He opened 
up the interiors of the Scribes and Pharisees, and 
they stood revealed, the religious monsters of the 
age. His preaching searched the heart and probed 
the most secret motive. He paid no deference to 
the assumed soundness of the creed then in vogue, 
nor inquired how many and how long prayers the 
people were accustomed to make. He showed the 
utter worthlessness of mere external religion. Jew- 
ish customs were of no avail, nor the traditions of 
the elders any authority. Obedience to the com- 
mandments of men was impious mockery, in that 
it rendered null and void the Word of God. 
Long prayers were offered in impious pretence, 
while underneath a pious exterior the most dia- 
bolical practices were indulged — acts of shameful 
extortion and excess. Dishonesty in business pre- 
vailed to such an extent, that even the widows and 
orphans were robbed by pious dignitaries of the 
Synagogue. There w 7 as no truth within. An empty 
formalism prevailed. At heart God was neither 
loved nor worshiped ; nor was the neighbor regarded. 
Both God and man are left out of the account in 
the mere externals of religion. Self alone is con- 
cerned. Self-love reigns supreme. It swells to 
enormous proportions. It is the centre toward 
which everything gravitates. It is the altar on 
which all things are sacrificed. The boast of re- 
ligious zeal, of concern for the purity of the creed, 



TJie Essentials of Christianity. 141 

and the aggrandizement of the sect, is vainglori- 
ous and empty. It is the boast of a partisan, the 
glory of a sensualist, and the cloak of a hypocrite. 
There is no Christianity in it. 

The prime factors of the Christian religion must 
of necessity be interior. Love cannot exist in the 
externals. It may manifest itself through them, 
but its existence is in the interiors. Nor can love 
to God and charity toward the neighbor be sepa- 
rated. The one cannot exist without the other. 
It is a Divine marriage that knows no such thing 
as divorce. When we truly worship God as re- 
quired by the first commandment of the Deca- 
logue, we at the same time fulfill the new com- 
mandment given by our Lord, that we should love 
our neighbor as ourselves. The all of religion is 
contained in these two requirements. You can 
neither add to them nor subtract from them ; nor 
can they be multiplied or divided, except by them- 
selves. They are the fulfillment of all the Law 
and the Prophets. 

Love is the fulfilling of the Law, and charity 
toward the neighbor is the realization of that ful- 
fillment in human experience. When good reigns 
in the interiors, to do good is the normal condition 
and life of the exteriors. A righteous life is 
evolved from the inner qualities of a righteous 
soul. Pure, unselfish, and practical love to man- 
kind is evolved from unfeigned love to God. The 



142 Progressive Thought. 

translucent glory of a pure life lived for the good 
of others, springs from the fountain of a pure 
heart. God dwells in the affections, and the 
neighbor is a welcome guest in every such dwell- 
ing-place. 

When the good Samaritan cared for the man 
who fell among thieves, he worshiped God by every 
act of compassion toward his fellow. The Priest 
and the Levite, though on their way to the Temple 
to pray, did not worship God at all, because there 
was no love in their hearts toward the neighbor. 
With them piety consisted in devotion to the 
temple service, and in adhesion to their forms 
and ceremonies. While in fact there was no piety 
at all in those things. Doing good to others from 
a principle of love and compassion, is piety (if 
there be an inward acknowledgment of the Lord). 
It is religion. It is religious worship. ItisGod-like, 
— infinitely above all forms and ceremonial observ- 
ances, all sacrifices and oblations, all creeds and 
dogmas, all ecclesiasticisms and church orders. It 
is the divine form of beneficent procedure, and the 
divine life incarnated in the hearts of men. Cold 
and frigid souls are melted under its influence, 
like ice beneath the warm sun of a summers day. 
All animosities and all alienations vanish at its 
touch. All evil thoughts, deeds, and imaginings 
flee at the approach of this divine love, as did evil 
spirits from the presence of Christ. Dead forms 



The Essentials of Christianity. 143 

are invested with new life. Proud self-will falls 
like Dagon before the ark of God. The sensuous 
principle ceases to dominate. The carnal nature 
is crucified. The interiors are cleansed. The ex- 
ternals are reformed. The whole man becomes a 
new creature. 

As the divine love imbues the will, so the divine 
light illumines the understanding. As truth takes 
root in the heart, its fruits are realized in the life. 
It is a living principle, a divine force, a potent 
agency, an unconquerable energy, and a divinely 
ordained instrumentality for good. It renders to 
all their just dues; honor to whom honor is due, 
tribute to whom tribute, custom to whom custom. 
It renders unto Csesar the things w T hich are 
Caesar's, and to God the things which are God's. 
It takes nothing which it does not give in return. 
Freely it receives, freely it gives. It hoards noth- 
ing through mere self-interest. Nor does it give 
ostentatiously for pomp or show, or to spread a 
sounding name abroad. It is merciful because it 
delighteth in mercy ; kind because it delighteth in 
kindness ; loving because it delighteth in love ; 
pure, meek, humble, obedient, honest, truthful, 
chaste, sober, upright, righteous, and neighborly, 
because the delight is in these things. 

These are not arbitrary rules, no enforced regula- 
tions, no ecclesiastical tyranny, no oppression of 
soul and no bondage to religious intolerance, where 



144 Progressive Thought 

love to God and the neighbor holds sway. Every 
yoke is broken. "For whom the Son makes free, 
he shall be free indeed." Without this love all gifts 
are valueless, and all graces of no avail. It is the 
infinite essence of the Divine nature, and it is the 
essential element of Christianity. There can be 
no such thing as Christianity without it. There 
may be the heated passion of the enthusiast, the 
blind zeal of the sectarian, the bigotry of the 
formalist, the devotion of the partisan, and the in- 
tolerance of the despot, without love to God or 
regard for man ; but the Christ spirit is in none of 
these things. Nor is this love a mere sentiment 
or emotion. It is infinitely more. It is both 
light and heat. It warms our hearts, and at the 
same time lights our pathway. It is the revelation 
of God in our conscious experience, and the res- 
toration of the prodigal to his Father's house. It 
inspires joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing 
flee away. It disperses the gloom of the spirit, 
and scatters the gathering clouds that hang lower- 
ing over the end of human life. It reveals the 
spiritual world, and assures us of the eternal re- 
alities of the future. It inspires obedience to God 
and devotion to the weal of man. It leads us to 
do good, and not evil, all the days of our lives. 
It forbids the oppression of the hireling in his 
wages, or the taking up of a reproach against 
one's neighbor. It leads to nothing silly or vain, 



The Essentials of Christianity, 145 

but to everything that is wise, and good, and use- 
ful. It has regard in all things to uses. What- 
ever is of use to man is of praise to God. That 
which is of no use, is dishonoring to God and 
deleterious to men. Things of use cannot be 
harmful, unless perverted and abused. Really, 
there is no evil except perverted good. There is 
no falsity except adulterated truth. Faith is 
good, but divorced from charity it becomes an ele- 
ment of evil. The wreck and ruin of Christendom 
are traceable to this cause. If charity had been 
the dominant principle, religious wars and perse- 
cutions would have been unknown. When the 
dogma of salvation by faith alone was pushed to 
the front, charity, sweet charity forsook the hearts 
of men. Religious zealots and fanatical reformers 
became incarnate devils ; and instead of loving 
the neighbor as themselves, they tortured him 
with every conceivable instrument of cruelty. 
Blood flowed in rivers, and the ashes of burned 
victims were scattered to the winds of heaven. 
Freedom was swept from the earth, liberty was 
unknown, and hope died out of human hearts. 
Hell broke loose, and during 1260 years the ten 
persecutions raged with unabated fury. 

The dogma of three persons in the Godhead 

and salvation by faith alone, was the shibboleth 

of Protestant religion, developed after the 1260 

years of Rome's supreme power had ended, but 

10 



146 Progressive Thought. 

with a spirit in many respects scarcely less satanic 
than that of Papal Rome itself. There was the 
same separation of faith from charity. Salvation 
was by faith alone, and there was not charity 
enough in exercise to tolerate any difference of 
opinion in religious matters. If charity had been 
the dominant principle, Protestantism would have 
been a unit to-day, because love to God and man 
would have tolerated differences of opinion in 
minor matters. But in its absence the Protestants 
became divided and subdivided into many dis- 
cordant factions, leaving entirely out of account 
the main issues, and exalting to supreme import- 
ance trivial points of disagreement. It was neither 
love to God nor charity toward the neighbor that 
divided the Christian world, and set its people in 
antagonism one against another. The unity of the 
faith originated in the doctrine of the absolute 
unity of God, and the resultant oneness of his 
people. The destruction of the unity of God de- 
stroyed also the unity of the faith and scattered 
the flock of Christ. A subversion of the divine 
order bred disorder throughout Christendom. 
Human " standards " were reared in direct opposi- 
tion to the Divine Standard. The Word of God 
was made null and void by the traditions of men. 
As divisions multiplied, bitterness of feeling was 
engendered, and, between the tw T o thieves of relig- 
ious intolerance and sectarian bigotry, the Christ 



The Essentials of Christianity. 147 

of charity was crucified, and is still crucified daily 
among us. It is a daily sacrifice. Often men are 
led to exclaim, 

u 0! the rarity 
Of Christian Charity 
Under the sun." 

And seldom do we hear the exclamation, except 
in derision, " Behold, how these brethren love one 
another ! " 

In the light of these considerations, we see how 
little of pure and unadulterated Christianity there 
is now in operation. For our love to one another 
is the exact measure of our love to the Lord. " If 
we love not our brother whom we have seen, how 
can we love God whom we have not seen ?" And 
if we love one another as He has given us com- 
mandment, then God dwells in us, and we in Him ; 
for " God is love." Thus our service becomes one 
of pleasure and delight, and not of fear, " because 
fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made 
perfect in love. But perfect love casteth out 
fear." 

Love to God leads us to keep the command- 
ments, and charity toward the neighbor enables 
us to hear one another's burdens. " Love worketh 
no ill to the neighbor ; therefore love is the fulfill- 
ing of the Law." " He that keepeth my com- 
mandments, he it is that loveth me." " If a man 
love me, he will keep ray words." "This is the 



148 Progressive Thought 

love of God, that we keep his commandments ; 
and his commandments are not grievous." 

Love is, therefore, the parent of all graces, the 
root of all excellence, the fountain of all knowl- 
edge, the standard of all judgment, the test of 
Divine fellowship, the essence of all obedience, 
the substance of all truth, the realization of all 
blessings, the source of all life, the abiding spring 
of all comfort, the end of Providence, the ineffable 
brightness of the Divine glory, the fullness of all 
revelation, the effective element of redemption, 
the harbinger of all good, the citadel of all power, 
the essential of all righteousness, the incarnation 
of God in humanity, and the bond of perfectness. 
It is the greater which comprehends the less of all 
there is in religion. 

God himself is love, and all things that are 
have been evolved from the unmeasurable infinity 
of his divine essence — love. That love is revealed 
in every sentence of the glorious gospel of Jesus 
Christ. It smiles in the sunlight, sparkles in the 
twinkling stars of night, drops in the gentle rain 
from heaven, blooms in the matchless beauty of 
ten thousand flowers, gushes from nature's peren- 
nial springs, blushes in the opening morn, and 
brings gladness to the heart of man in the abun- 
dant harvests of earth. When night around us 
her sable mantle spreads, love — infinite, almighty 
love — a constant vigil keeps, while nature's sweet 



The Essentials of Christianity, 149 

restorer, balmy sleep, gives rest and repose to these 
weary bodies and care-burdened minds. 

Thus, by day and by night, from the heavens 
above and the earth beneath, from gospel and from 
law, all things proclaim the Lord Jehovah, God 
of love. And all things invite man to neighborly 
fellowship with man. They bid the nations sheath 
the sword and learn to war no more. They com- 
mand the oppressor to oppress no more, and the 
spoiler to cease from spoiling. They proclaim a 
jubilee to the burdened millions of earth, bidding 
them cease to do evil, and learn to do well, by 
doing unto others all things they would that others 
should do unto them. Thus love becomes " the 
repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths to 
dwell in." Man is brought into reciprocal union 
and fellowship with the neighbor, and everywhere 
delights in the abundance of peace and prosperity. 
There is the closest union even amid the greatest 
diversity. 

Under such a regime there can be no persecu- 
tion for opinion's sake. There may be the utmost 
fidelity to one's own convictions, and yet unre- 
strained toleration toward others of a different 
mind. All nature is diverse, aud yet in harmony ; 
thus God teaches us the lesson of unity with diver- 
sity, of harmony amid the greatest possible variety 
and unlikeness in the natural world. There are 
no two plants, trees, shrubs, flowers, grains, or 



150 Progressive Thought 

grasses alike. Throughout the universal realm 
of nature no two things are exactly alike. 
There are no two human beings alike. They 
differ in form and feature, in body and in 
mind. They differ in mental compass, in intel- 
lectual acumen, in education and surroundings 
They are small and great, narrow and broad, 
shallow and profound, enlightened and ignorant ; 
and yet it is possible for all to dwell together 
in unity. But it must be in the Divine order. 
The acorn sustains a relation to the oak, the germ 
to the plant, the rill to the brook, the brook to the 
river, and the river to the sea. But any one can 
see that it is impossible to put the oak into the 
acorn, the plant into the germ, the brook into the 
rill, the river into the brook, or the sea into the 
river. So you cannot put the great within the 
small, the broad within the narrow, the profound 
within the shallow, nor intelligence within unen- 
lightenment. The attempt to do this disrupts the 
union, breaks the harmony, and inverts the divine 
order of the universe. All strifes and divisions, 
all animosities and bickerings, all religious wars 
and persecutions, are the result of this inversion. 
Carried out to its logical sequence, this inversion 
w 7 ould disrupt the harmony of heaven itself, and 
produce therein the discord and confusion of hell. 
Obedience to the axiomatic principle of love to 
God and charity toward the neighbor as the 



The Essentials of Christianity, 151 

essential thing and the fundamental love of life, 
is all that constitutes heaven. And when this 
principle is acknowledged and acted upon among 
the men of the church on earth, then will his king- 
dom come, and his will be done on earth as it is 
in heaven ; and the whole world will be filled with 
a knowledge of his glory, as the waters cover 
the sea ; and all flesh shall see the salvation of 
our God. 

Such is to be the realized condition of things on 
this globe. The creation of the new heavens and 
the new r earth, will be its accomplished fulfillment. 
It is according to the Divine promise, and is em- 
bodied in God's infinite purposes of grace. It will 
be brought about in ways we know not of. Anew 
dispensation will succeed that which has domi- 
nated the religious world for nearly two thousand 
years. Its early dawn even now appears. The 
glorious sun of divine love and charity is rising, 
never more to go down leaving the children of 
men in darkness. Love to God and charity to- 
ward the neighbor will abound more and more. 
The old spirit of religious intolerance will be cast 
out. Old worn-out systems of theology will 
gradually disappear. The creeds of men will be 
subject to repeated revisions, and finally be oblit- 
erated forever from Christian literature. The 
spiritual and celestial sense of the Sacred Scrip- 
tures will become more and more manifest. Man- 



152 Progressive Thought. 

kind will be brought closer together, as they are 
lifted from the low marshes of sensuality and moral 
night, into the light of greater intelligence and 
higher spiritual discernment. The general dif- 
fusion of knowledge blended with neighborly love, 
will break the oppressor's yoke and hurl despots 
from their thrones. The spreading abroad of 
religious liberty and the increase of spiritual 
knowledge, will annihilate the throne of ecclesias- 
tical tyranny, and emancipate the mass of Chris- 
tians from sectarian bondage. Already the walls 
of separation are tottering to their fall. Amid 
the ruins of the old system will the new one rise, 
magnificently grand, as the Holy City of God, 
" the New Jerusalem descending from God out of 
heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her 
husband. " 



«t-^^k.^^^^^^.^^-# 



VIII. 

WHAT IS "EVANGELICAL RELIGION"? 

[UCH is said concerning evangelical religion 
and an orthodox faith. Any type of religion 
that has the evangelical label is regarded as sound 
beyond question, and as one that will pass current, 
not only in this world but in that which is to come. 
Of course, there can be no admixture of error in 
that which is declared " evangelical," even as it is 
impossible that there should be any truth in any 
system of religion not couched in evangelical forms 
of expression. It is assumed that everything out- 
side of the so-called evangelical system is erro- 
neous, schismatic, and heretical, destructive to man 
and dishonoring to God. But assumptions prove 
nothing. Words and forms of expression are 
often employed that convey no meaning. Truth 
may be rejected as error, while falsity is confirmed 
as truth. 

We have fallen upon times when the doctrines 
and commandments of men are received as the 
" Living Oracles," and when human tradition 
renders the Word of God of none effect ; when 
policy is more potent than principle, and the honor 
that cometh from men is sought rather than the 
honor that cometh from God; when systems are 
153 



154 Progressive Thought 

estimated according to set forms of speech, and 
human character by the outward expression of the 
lips. Hence all that is necessary to know of a 
church, is the soundness of its creed. If the creed 
is regarded as correct, the church is termed evan- 
gelical, and no further questions are asked. 
Churches by a vote adopt an orthodox creed, and 
are therefore considered orthodox. They subscribe 
to doctrines called " evangelical, " and hence become 
evangelical churches. By a similar kind of 
reasoning men profess honesty, and are therefore 
to be accounted honest. Licentious people may 
avow chastity, and therefore are to be considered 
chaste. Corruption may assume the garb of pu- 
rity, and thus be declared pure. 

But any one of ordinary intelligence can see 
the fallacy of such reasoning. Men may assume 
to be honest and pure and chaste, but that does 
not make them so. It is the reality and not the 
profession that is needed. Declaring by a vote 
that a certain system of doctrines is "evan- 
gelical," does not constitute it such. The vote is 
merely the expressed opinion of those who have 
adopted the system. In fact, the doctrines may 
not be true. Truth is one thing, and the under- 
standing of it is another. Then it makes a 
wonderful difference whether we receive it in the 
intellect only, or possess it in the heart ; whether 
it enters into the understanding simply, or into 



What is " Evangelical Religion M / 155 

the will or affections as well. Before we can 
rightfully claim to be evangelical, truth must 
come into the understanding and thence into the 
will, in the supremacy of its regenerating power. 
The acceptance or adoption of a system of doctrine, 
does not necessarily effect any change in the in- 
ternal state or quality of the heart. 

Hence it often happens that men who subscribe 
to the strictest evangelical doctrines, are both 
ignorant and self-willed. The doctrines do not of 
necessity make them such ; but resting in the mere 
external profession of them does. This obviates 
the need of a personal search for truth, and in 
fact precludes thorough investigation. Men are 
taught from childhood that a certain system of 
belief is evangelical. The parent inherits the 
idea and transmits it to his children ; and so on 
from generation to generation. They are taught 
at the same time that everything outside of that 
so-called evangelical creed, is non-evangelical and 
false. 

To such an extent does this belief or impression 
prevail, that there are thousands of ministers who 
have never dared to make an independent exami- 
nation of religious truth for themselves. They 
simply believe and teach the system in which they 
have been educated. I am not blaming the min- 
isters, but the cast-iron systems that hamper them. 
To cut loose from the bondage of tradition and 



156 Progressive Thought. 

creed, and proclaim their freedom and right of 
private judgment and of personal investigation of 
truth, is to subject themselves to social ostracism, 
and often to the anathemas of their brethren. 
Their motives are impugned, which is the worst 
possible form of persecution; and everything is 
done to destroy the public confidence in them as 
men of honor and veracity. 

Under such circumstances it is not to be won- 
dered at that preachers often smother their honest 
convictions, and cherish them as private property 
rather than, by giving them public expression, to 
subject themselves to the "evangelical" (?) forms 
of persecution that are sure to follow. Thus a 
temptation is placed before them to maintain a 
guilty silence, and dishonesty is awarded a pre- 
mium. To be frank and honest is to suffer ostra- 
cism ; to be dishonest is to gain favor, influence, 
fellowship, honor, and a good support. Yet it is 
all " evangelical." It does not matter what you 
believe, or w T hat you do not believe, so long as you 
keep it to yourself. You may not, deep down in 
your heart, credit a single dogma of the creed ; 
but so long as you say you do, and preach within 
its prescribed limits, you are all right because you 
are " evangelical." You obey the powers that be, 
and conform to established usage. But even 
though God himself reveal to you a knowledge of 
truth beyond the boundary line of your particular 



What is "Evangelical Religion" t 157 

system, and bid you proclaim it to the world, you 
must not obey Him, for it would not be " evan- 
gelical " to do so. 

I know the Lord has given me the views of 
truth which of late I have proclaimed to the 
world, and that He bade me give utterance to 
them ; and for doing as I have done, in conscien- 
tious obedience to God, I am declared non-evan- 
gelical ; and this church is cut off from denomina- 
tional fellowship, for allowing its pastor to follow 
his convictions of duty in honestly preaching the 
truth as he understands it. Sympathy was ex- 
pressed in words for this church not long ago, but 
it was repeatedly declared that not one particle of 
sympathy was had for its pastor. No sympathy, 
no love, no fellowship, no effort to point out my 
errors by answering my arguments, and no effort 
to show from the Word the fallacy of my reason- 
ing; but in place of these, bitter denunciation, 
cruel imputations, and personal ill-treatment; — con- 
demned without being allowed a hearing or even 
a word explaining my position. Yet all this was 
" evangelical " ! It was after the most approved 
pattern of orthodox treatment of those who differ 
in opinion from the formulated standards of relig- 
ious belief. 

But because a system of doctrine is labeled 
" evangelical," we are not therefore to conclude 
that it is really such, until it has been tested and 



158 Progressive Thought. 

proved. The Word of the Lord judges every man ; 
and before the same court of final appeal, must all 
systems of religious doctrine be brought at last. 
The test will be searching, the judgment just, and 
the decision final. Men are judged according to 
their works, trees by their fruits, and religious 
beliefs by their effects upon life and character. 
This is what Christ meant when He said, " By 
their fruits ye shall know them. Do men gather 
grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?" 

As every tree produces fruit according to its 
kind, so every system produces effects according to 
its own nature. If the fruit is corrupt, the tree 
that produced it is corrupt also. It is impossible 
for a good tree to produce evil fruit. The good 
tree of the Scriptures is the religion of Jesus 
Christ. If there is any discrepancy between it 
and evangelical religion (so-called), so much the 
worse for the religion. The religion of Christ 
may be summed up in one word, " Love." It is 
all contained in that word. " God is love ; and he 
that dwelleth in lovedwelleth in God, and God in 
him." (1 John iv. 16.) " Beloved, let us love one 
another : for love is of God ; and every one that 
loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He 
that loveth not, knoweth not God ; for God is love." 
(v. 7, 8.) Hence it is said again : " Love worketh 
no ill to his neighbor ; therefore love is the fulfill- 
ing of the Law." (Rom. xiii. 10.) " If ye love 



What Is " Evangelical Religion " / 159 

me, keep my commandments." (John xiv. 15.) 
" This is my commandment, that ye love one an- 
other, as I have loved you." (xv. 12.) " He that 
loveth me not, keepeth not my sayings." " By 
this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, 
if ye have love one to another." (John xiii. 35.) 
"Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord 
thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, 
and with all thy mind. This is the first and great 
commandment. And the second is like unto it, 
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." (Matt. 
xxii. 37, 38, 39.) 

Thus we see that the religion of Christ in its 
essence, spirit, influence, and effects — in its inter- 
nal operations and its external manifestations — 
is love to God and love to man. It renders to 
God that which is God's own, also to Csesar that 
which is Caesar's, and to every man that which is 
his rightful due. It inflicts no injury ; works no 
ill ; does no harm ; burdens no oppressed spirit ; 
blinds no eyes ; stops no ears ; hardens no heart ; 
breathes no spite, or hatred, or wrath, or malice, 
or revenge ; forges no fetters ; establishes no dog- 
mas ; sanctions no unjust judgment of another; 
gives no license to do evil, to inflict pain, or to 
persecute. It heals the wounded spirit, helps the 
struggling soul, floods the understanding with 
light and the heart with love. 

The religion of Christ is broad and philanthropic. 



160 Progressive Thought. 

It is deep and comprehensive. It is minute, yet 
vast and infinite. It is human, yet Divine; par- 
ticular, yet general; concentrated, yet diffused. 
It is concentrated in the heart and diffused through 
the life. It reforms the life or outward conduct, 
and regenerates the soul. It gives to every man 
light and life as he is prepared to receive it. It 
fills alike the smallest and the greatest measure of 
capacity. It makes no set of men its exclusive 
custodians, and delegates to no church the power 
or right to dictate the plan or extent of its opera- 
tions. It can no more be put into a creed than 
the ocean can be bottled up and set upon the 
shelves of an apothecary shop. It can no more 
be contained in dogmatic statements than the 
air surrounding our globe can be contained in a 
Chinese bomb. 

The religion of Christ is love and lignt. It is 
righteousness of life, and not a mere bundle of 
abstractions. It transforms character, enlightens 
the understanding, renews the will, purifies the 
heart, and permeates the whole man. It does not 
consist in subscribing creeds, but in a life accord- 
ing to the commandments. It is manifested, not 
in words but in deeds, and consists not in profes- 
sions but in possessions. In spirit, it is the golden 
rule. It leads us to do unto others as we would that 
they should do unto us. As we would not inflict 
an injury upon ourselves, so it makes it impossible 



What is "Evangelical Religion" f 161 

for us to inflict an injury upon others. Christ 
taught his religion as recorded in the Gospels, and 
exemplified it in his life. His disciples drank of 
his spirit, and copied his example; and others 
took knowledge of them that they had been with 
Jesus. Christ was their Teacher, and thus they 
were taught of God. 

In short, the religion of Jesus Christ reveals 
God, shows us his personal unity, tells us plainly 
of the Father, unveils eternity, brings life and 
immortality to light, secures the at-one-ment, 
effects the reconciliation and the resurrection from 
the dead, reveals the spiritual world, the nature 
of the last judgment and of heaven and hell, that 
men might not walk in darkness, but have the 
light of life. 

Thus have I briefly sketched the religion of the 
Lord Jesus Christ. And this is the religion we 
preach, the religion that purifies, exalts, ennobles, 
saves. Yet it has, as you all know, been declared 
heresy, and hence not " evangelical. " In view of 
which, I trust it will not be deemed uncharitable 
if I declare that the so-called evangelical religion 
is not the religion of Christ, and therefore is not 
truly evangelical. Shall I tell you why ? I will — 
though the task is not one in which I take any 
delight, and though I may, by so doing, wound the 
feelings of some estimable people, and incur the 
liability of having my motives impugned and my 
11 



162 Progressive Thought. 

purpose misconstrued. But the time, I think, has 
arrived for plain speaking on this as on all other 
subjects. My reasons, then, briefly stated, are the 
following : — 

The so-called evangelical religion destroys the 
unity of God, robs Christ of his supreme Divinity, 
presents an erroneous view of the atonement and 
the resurrection, of the spiritual world and the 
life of man after death. It ignores the second 
coming of the Lord, or misunderstands and misin- 
terprets the prophecies which foretell it. It is 
sectarian, so much so that the church which is the 
Lord's body, is rent asunder, member from mem- 
ber — thus destroying the visible unity of the body. 
It is founded on diverse and conflicting creeds 
and commandments of men. It is proscriptive 
and oppressive in its spirit and methods. It is in 
opposition to the Saviour's prayer for the unity of 
his people. It is without Divine sanction or war- 
rant. It has been, and is, productive of unholy 
divisions and strifes among those who should be 
of one mind and one heart. Its history is dark 
with deeds of persecution and blood. It has in- 
spired in not a few the disposition to " Lord it 
over God's heritage." Hence the " Clerical Or- 
ders" from the Pope down to the humblest preacher 
that rides an appointed circuit. Its symbols are a 
mixture of truth and error. Great truths are fal- 
sified and corrupted, and fundamental errors are 



What is "Evangelical Religion" t 163 

confirmed as truth. It is largely a religion of 
worldly policy, external grandeur, and sectarian 
rivalry. Denominational affairs are often manip- 
ulated by rings as unscrupulous as ever disgraced 
the political arena. Churches are often made 
seemingly to prosper by dishonest and underhanded 
means, of which an ordinary sinner would be 
ashamed. " Cunning craftiness," smooth-tongued 
flattery, lying and deception, are sometimes em- 
ployed on the principle that the " end justifies the 
means." The commandments of Christ are ig- 
nored, and the "Golden Rule" trampled under 
foot. The Sacred Scriptures are rendered null 
and void by the creed being made the supreme 
test of character and Christian fellowship. The 
sweetest charity and the purest heart that throbs 
in a human breast, find but a cold welcome, if any, 
within the " evangelical " fold, if the dogmas of the 
creed are dissented from. Though you bind the 
Word of God upon your bosom, and cherish its 
sacred precepts in your heart, and obey its com- 
mandments in your life, and fail in your adherence 
to creed, you are turned away. There is no room 
for such as you within the " evangelical" fold. It 
is a sort of religious or ecclesiastical corral, and 
the Word of the Lord is not a passport of suffi- 
cient authority to pass you across the lines. 

Intelligent people have long observed this state 
of things, and the effect has been to develop skep- 



164 Progressive Thought. 

ticism and unbelief to such an extent that the 
masses in Christian lands are as far removed from 
the influence of the Gospel as though they dwelt 
upon the planet Mars. In rejecting the unreason- 
able and unscriptural interpretations of the " evan- 
gelical" school of Christians, they have discarded 
Christianity itself. It is not strange they should 
confound the two, since from their earliest recollec- 
tions evangelical religion has been proclaimed as 
the religion of Jesus Christ. But there is a wide 
difference between them, and every year the breach 
grows wider or more palpable. 

In drawing this indictment against the so-called 
"evangelical religion " of our time, I would not 
be understood as holding or teaching that no truth 
is preached, .or that there are no good people in 
the "evangelical churches." A great deal of 
truth is proclaimed there, and millions of good 
Christian people, I doubt not, are to be found there. 
But I refer to the systems themselves, to the secta- 
rian organizations, their empty boast of superior 
piety, the controlling forces that operate them, 
and the principles according to which they are 
generally manipulated. 

There is nothing about " evangelical religion " 
in the Bible. It is a theological term, and churches 
are only human organizations. Just in so far as 
they are controlled by the Word and Spirit of 
Christ they are Christian churches, and no further. 



What is "Evangelical Religion"? 165 

Now, since your Pastor has been declared a 
heretic by the Central Baptist Association of Cali- 
fornia, and you have been refused admission into 
that body because of your adherence to him and 
his teachings, it seems proper and right, before I 
conclude, that I should give a brief summary of 
my faith, in order that you may know precisely 
what the alleged heresy is. I will say, then — 

I believe in the Divine Trinity of Father, Son, 
and Holy Ghost, as revealed in the Sacred Scrip- 
tures. I believe that Jesus Christ is God, and the 
only God of heaven and earth ; that the whole 
of the Divine Trinity (which is a Trinity not of 
persons but of essential divine elements in one 
person) is in Him ; that He is the manifested Jeho- 
vah, and the only proper object, therefore, of relig- 
ious worship. I believe in the Divine Incarnation, 
and in the atonement of Christ, but not in its 
vicarious nature. I believe in the resurrection and 
ascension of Christ as our Mediator. I believe in 
the resurrection of man, not in a material, but in 
a spiritual and substantial body. I believe in the 
second coming of the Lord "in the clouds of 
heaven, " which clouds I understand to mean the 
letter of the Word, which veils, and to some eyes 
obscures, its inner glories. I believe in a judgment 
to come, w T hen every man will be judged according 
to his works. I believe in a heaven and a hell 
(not outward and material, but as inward and 



166 Progressive Thought. 

spiritual states of life), in one or the other of 
which every human being will dwell forever. I 
believe in the divine inspiration of the Sacred 
Scriptures — an inspiration far higher and deeper, 
too, than that attributed to them in the theologies 
of " evangelical religion. " I believe a Christian 
life consists in living according to the command- 
ments of God. I believe in the necessity of re- 
generation, and that no man can enter into the 
Kingdom of God except he be born again — born 
from above. 

Now, if the above declaration of belief is heret- 
ical, I must plead guilty to the charge of heresy. 
If to reject the dogmas, commandments, and creeds 
of men is heresy, then I am a heretic ; and as 
such I propose to live and die. If, for cherishing 
such a faith as this, I am persecuted, and my name 
is cast out as evil, I count it an honor so to suffer. 
It ministers to my happiness. It draws me closer 
to the blessed Saviour, and makes me more con- 
scious of the Divine approval. 

For the past four years I have lived blamelessly 
among you, and have endeavored to do my duty 
publicly and privately, without fear or favor. To- 
night, I stand in conscious freedom, and in the 
dignity of manly independence. No ecclesiastical 
bonds fetter my soul or chafe my spirit with their 
rusty links. No evangelical gatekeeper exact3 
toll of my conscience. The toll-gates where the 



What is "Evangelical Religion" ? 167 

rights of conscience are invaded, and the spirit is 
bled, and manhood robbed of its dignity and 
strength, are all on the roads beneath where hire- 
lings and servile minions journey.. The highways 
above are free. The air is pure. The sky is 
bright. The flowers are fragrant. The fruits 
abundant. The view is grand. The scenery mag- 
nificent. The experience of all who journey 
thither, delightful. There are no "evangelical" 
fogs up there. The mists of error are lifted. The 
clouds of falsity have rolled away. There are no 
bundles of dead abstractions and debris of decayed 
systems obstructing the way. They are all down be- • 
low, in the museums of antiquity. No one ever gets 
up very high on the mount of God with a lumbering 
human creed upon his shoulders or across his path. 
Such things have no place in the King's highway. 
They are cast out as hindrances and obstructions. 
They are as little thought of above, as a gardener 
thinks of a bundle of dead weeds which he casts 
into the fire. Our Lord Jesus Christ reigns with- 
out a rival there. His Word is Law. His scep- 
ter, Power. His nature. Love. His revelation, 
Truth. And his seven-sealed book of Holy Truth 
is opened to such as have eyes to see, and they 
behold Him coming in the clouds of heaven, with 
power and great glory. They tread the golden 
streets of the New Jerusalem, drink at the crystal 
stream " which proceedeth out of the throne of 



168 Progressive Thought. 

God," eat at will of the fruit of the " Tree of Life/ 5 
and look out without alarm upon the warring ele- 
ments beneath. No rage of enemies can reach 
them there. No shafts of envy or malice can 
penetrate the solid jasper walls that encircle them. 
The study and the practice of the highest truth is 
their delightful employment. Eternal progress 
in all excellence and in all knowledge, their earn- 
est desire and fulfilled hope. To approximate 
toward infinite perfection itself, their sublime mis- 
sion. So they go on and on through the unending 
cycles of an everlasting existence, exploring the 
boundless empire of truth and love, and beholding 
therein more and more of the goodness and glory 
and mercy of the Lord, to Whom belongs ceaseless 
and everlasting praise. Amen. 



■*^^x^ 



>»•»- 



IX, 

KEEPING THE COMMANDMENTS. 

HE commandments of our Lord Jesus Christ 
are the only law of Christian living, and 
obeying them is the only way by which we can 
honor God, benefit the world of mankind, or enter 
ourselves into the life eternal. The fatal heresy 
is widespread, and the teachers of it are legion, 
that we can be saved by faith alone. It is taught 
that we are not required to keep the command- 
ments, since Jesus Christ has kept them for us, or 
in our stead. Indeed, it is often urged that it is 
impossible for us to keep them, and that therefore 
we are regarded as " not under the law, but under 
grace." 

But the law alluded to by the Apostle in this 
connection was not the Decalogue or the Com- 
mandments of Christ, but the ceremonial law — 
the typical observances under the Levitical priest- 
hood, which stood only in meats and drinks, and 
divers washings, and carnal ordinances imposed 
on the people. They were " shadows of heavenly 
things," mere signs or symbols of good things to 
come, which made nothing perfect; but the bring- 
ing in of a better hope by which we draw nigh 
16 r J 



170 Progressive Thought 

unto God, did. When Christ came, the mission 
of the ceremonial law of Moses was at an end. 
" The Law and the Prophets were until John ; 
since then the kingdom of God is preached, and 
every man may enter into it." 

The prophets prophesied till John the Baptist 
appeared as the forerunner of Christ; and up to 
that time the ceremonial law was in force. Then 
Christ became the end of that law for righteous- 
ness, to every one that accepted Him as the Mes- 
siah, to whom the law pointed. Hence Jesus says, 
" Think not that I am come to destroy the law or 
the prophets. I came not to destroy, but to ful- 
fill." He came as the substance of all the cere- 
monial shadows ; as the antitype of all the Mosaic 
types, and as the fulfillment of all the prophecies 
concerning his advent. He obeyed the Decalogue, 
but never did He abrogate or set it aside. Not 
once, in all his teaching, did He even intimate that 
men were not under it, or that by his coming it 
had lost any of its force, or that we could be saved 
without obedience to it. Instead of this, He epito- 
mized the moral law under two heads, viz. : " Thou 
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, 
and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and 
with all thy strength ; and thy neighbor as thy- 
self." He declared that " on these two command- 
ments hang all the law and the prophets." And 
in harmony with this utterance was his reply to 



Keeping the Commandments. 171 

the young man who propounded an unusual in- 
quiry for those times, " Good Master, what must 
I do to inherit eternal life ?" It was no temporal 
blessing he craved. It was no bodily healing he 
desired. He would know what was necessary to 
be done to secure eternal life. Jesus answered, 
" If thou wouldst enter into life, keep the com- 
mandments. " Now, many teach that our Lord 
gave a misleading, equivocal answer to the young 
man's question! But if I believed such a thing 
possible of Jesus Christ, I could not even regard 
Him as a good man, much less worship Him as 
God. 

Christ overcame the enemies of man in his own 
assumed humanity, by obedience to his Father's 
commandments ; and He is our example, and we 
should follow in his footsteps. Would you over- 
come idolatry in your heart, and cast out its spirit, 
keep the first commandment, and worship the 
Lord thy God, and serve Him only. Would you 
gain the mastery over the habit and sin of pro- 
fanity, keep the commandment, "Thou shalt not 
take the name of the Lord thy God in vain." 

And so on to the end of the Decalogue. Be- 
tween the first and tenth commandments is com- 
prised every evil to be put away, and every good 
to be done, in the whole compass of human life, 
not only in time, but for eternity as well. It is 
the immutable, unalterable, and eternal law of 



172 Progressive Thought. 

Jehovah God, our Lord Jesus Christ, operating 
uniformly in all worlds for the government of his 
intelligent creatures. 

And as the Lord Jesus Christ who, clothed in 
our humanity, has kept that law, we may also keep 
it by strength received from Him, and may walk 
in the shining way of obedience, " more than con- 
querors through Him that hath loved us." 

But leaving this part of our subject, let us come 
to the consideration of our Lord's doctrine con- 
cerning obedience to his commandments. And 
bear in mind that every sentence I quote in this 
connection was inspired by Him. 

" Whosoever shall break one of the least of 
these commandments, and shall teach men so, he 
shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven ; 
but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same 
shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 
For I say unto you, that except your righteousness 
shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and 
Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the king- 
dom of heaven." 

" Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit, is 
hewn down and cast into the fire. Wherefore by 
their fruits ye shall know thern." 

" Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, 
shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he 
that doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven." 

"Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, 
have we not prophesied in thy name, and in thy 
name have cast out devils, and in thy name done 
many wonderful works? And then will I profess 



Keeping the Commandments. 173 

unto them, I never knew you ; depart from me ye 
that work iniquity" 

" Every one that heareth my words and doeth 
them, I will liken him unto a wise man that built 
his house upon a rock. But every one that hear- 
eth and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a 
foolish man that built his house upon the sand." 

" For the Son of Man shall come in the glory 
of his Father, and then shall He reward every man 
according to his works." 

" He said to the Jews : The kingdom of God 
shall be taken from you, and given to a nation 
bringing forth the fruits thereof." 

" When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, 
then shall He sit upon the throne of his glory. . . . 
And He shall say to the sheep on his right hand. 
Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the king- 
dom prepared for you from the foundation of the 
world ; for I was hungry, and ye gave me meat; I 
was thirsty, and ye gave me drink ; Iivas a stranger, 
and ye took me in ; I was naked, amd ye clothed 
me ; I ivas sick, and ye visited me ; I was in prison, 
and ye came unto me. . . . Verily, I say unto 
you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the 
least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto 
me." 

" Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance. 
For now, also, the axe is laid at the root of the 
trees ; every tree, therefore,- which bringeth not 
forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the 
fire." 

" Jesus said, Why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and 
do not the tilings which I say ?" 

" Every one that cometh to me, and heareth my 
sayings and doeth them, is like unto a man who 



174 Progressive Thought. 

built a house and laid the foundation upon a rock. 
But he that heareth and doeth not, is like a man 
who without a foundation built his house upon the 
earth." 

" Jesus said : My mother and my brethren are 
these that hear the "Word of God and do it." 

" Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity." 

"This is the condemnation, that light is come 
into the world, and men love darkness rather than 
light, because their deeds are evil." 

"Everyone that doeth evil hateth the light, 
neither cometh to the light lest his deeds should be 
reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the 
light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that 
they are wrought in God." 

"And they that have done good, shall come forth 
unto the resurrection of life." 

" If any man worship God, and do his will, him 
He heareth." 

" If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do 
them." 

" He that hath my commandments and doeth 
them, he it is that loveth me, and I will love him, 
and will manifest myself to him. . . . And I will 
come to him and make my abode with him. He 
that loveth me not, keepeth not my sayings." 

"I am the true vine, and my Father is the hus- 
bandman ; every branch in me that heareth not 
fruit, He taketh away ; but every branch that hear- 
eth fruit, He purgeth it, that it may bring forth more 
fruit" 

"Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear 
much fruit, so shall ye be my disciples." 

"Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I com- 
mand you. ... I have chosen you, that ye should 



Keeping the Commandments. 175 

bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should re- 
main" 

" If ye love me, keep my commandments." 

" He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same 
bring eth forth much fruit." 

"If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in 
my love; even as I have kept my Father's com- 
mandments and abide in his love." 

" This is my commandment, That ye love one 
another as I have loved you." 

" Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus 
write : I know thy works, and thy labor, and thy 
patience ; I have against thee that thou hast left thy 
first love. Repent and do the first works, or else I 
will remove thy candlestick out of his place." 

"And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna, 
write, I know thy works" 

" To the angel of the church in Pergamos write, 
I know thy works. Repent" 

" To the angel of the church in Thyatira write, 
I know thy works, and charity, and service, and faith, 
and thy patience, and thy works ; and the last to 
be more than the first." 

"And unto the angel of the church in Sardis 
write, I know thy works, that thou hast a name that 
thou livest, and art dead. I have not found thy 
works perfect before God. Repent." 

"And to the angel of the church in Philadel- 
phia write, / know thy ivorks." 

" To the angel of the church of the Laodiceans 
write, J know thy ivorks. Repent." 

" I heard a voice from heaven, saying, Write, 
Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, from 
henceforth ; yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest 
from their labors, and their ivorks do follow them." 



176 Progressive Thought 

"And I saw the dead, small and great, stand 
before God. And the books were opened, and 
another book was opened which is the book of life ; 
and the dead were judged out of these things 
which were written in the books, according to their 
ivorks" 

"And they were judged every man according to 
their works" 

" Behold, I come quickly, and my reward is with 
me, to give every man according as his work shall 
her 

" Blessed are they that do his commandments, 
that they may have right to the tree of life." 

Now all these are the commandments of our 
Lord Jesus Christ. They are the directions He 
gives for leading a righteous life. How volumi- 
nous, how imperative, how unequivocal, how simple, 
how easy to be understood, how absolutely essen- 
tial, either to a good life on earth or to an entrance 
at last into the kingdom of heaven ! All his in- 
structions concerning the acquirement of spiritual 
blessings, both for this life and for that which is 
to come, are, without an exception, predicated upon 
the faithful doing of his commandments. Every 
one of the seven churches of Asia were judged, 
not according to their faith, or their professions, 
or their theories, or emotions, or sentiments ; but 
according to their works. 

Every one in the day of final adjudication^ 
(Rev. xx.) is to be judged according to his works 
as found written in the books (the interiors of the 



Keeping the Commandments. 177 

soul) when opened. And almost the last thing 
recorded in the book of Revelation, is a blessing 
pronounced upon those " that do his commandments, 
that they may have right to the tree of life, and 
may enter in through the gates into the city." 
And in his commission to his Apostles, just before 
his ascension, our Lord said : " Go ye, therefore, 
and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name 
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever 
I have commanded you." 

We conclude, therefore, that implicit obedience 
to the Lord's commandments is absolutely essen- 
tial to salvation, and that our obedience must be, 
not from ourselves, but as from the Lord, for it is 
He that worketh in us both to will and to do his 
good pleasure. There is no merit, therefore, in our 
obedience, no goodness in our works, if done from 
self or in our own name ; for we have no power of 
our own either to be good or to do good. "Power 
belongeth unto God." Jesus Christ has all power 
in heaven and in earth. He has gone before us in 
all the way we are to go, in our human nature, 
overcoming all the evils within it ; and He gives 
us the needed strength to do his will, to overcome 
by keeping his commandments, even as He over- 
came by keeping the same eternal laws. 

You will observe that we are saved, not for keep- 
ing the commandments, but in keeping them. 
12 



178 Progressive Thought 

They are the path we tread in our journey back 
to our Father's house, from which by transgres- 
sion we have wandered. They are opened to our 
understandings as the "path of life/' and the 
" way of salvation." Therefore, " if thou wouldst 
enter into life, keep the commandments." They 
are " the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus." 
The Divine fullness flows into poor impoverished 
humanity, through this God-ordained channel. 

We are thus made free from the law of sin and 
death. Our carnal, sinful nature is thus subdued, 
overcome, and forever put away. Our self-intelli- 
gence thus gives place to Divine wisdom; our 
self-love to heavenly affections ; our ignorance to 
enlightenment; our errors to divine truth; and 
our bondage to sin, to the freedom of the sons of 
God. 



-**^gfr » ^<««- 



-Hg^S^c-^H-r-* * ^~ T ? I » 



ADDENDUM. 



jlHE Editor of this volume takes the liberty 
I of adding the following, which seems not 
only pertinent, but is in such complete agreement 
with some things which the author has said of 
the " evangelical churches " of our times (see 
pp. 153-166), and withal is so confirmatory of 
the truth of his statements, that it ought not to 
be omitted. 

Rev. John W. White, of Milroy, Pa., an able 
and highly esteemed minister of the Presbyterian 
church, had for several years held and taught 
substantially the same religious views as those 
presented in the foregoing pages. And some 
three years ago, he was reported to have been 
charged by " Common Fame," 

" 1st. With denying the doctrine of the atone- 
ment as taught in our [Presbyterian] standards. 

" 2d. With denying the doctrine of the Trinity 
as taught in the standards of our church. 

" 3d. With discouraging the circulation of the 
Shorter Catechism in the Sabbath-school and among 
his people ; and 

"4th. With circulating and encouraging the 
circulation of books and tracts and other writings 
teaching the doctrines of Swedenborg." 
179 



180 Progressive Thought. 

Accordingly a committee of three (two ministers 
and one elder) was appointed to investigate these 
charges. And not long after, Mr. White was 
" cited to appear before the Presbytery of Hunt- 
ingdon," (Pa.) — September 4th, 1883 — " to answer 
to the [above] charges of Common Fame." He 
responded to the summons, and was tried for 
heresy — the trial lasting three days — a full and 
verbatim report of which was soon after published 
and is now before me. From the closing speech 
(13 octavo pages) that Mr. White w T as allowed to 
make before Presbytery, which was admirable 
throughout, and revealed with great. clearness the 
upright, noble, and truly Christian spirit of the 
accused, I make the following extracts : 

" I look back — and you will pardon me for the 
personal references which I must make, because 
this whole trial has had reference to myself and 
the views I hold — I look back over my life, and 
see that I have come to the point where I stand 
to-day, not so much by any sudden overturning in 
my religious feelings or convictions, as by a growth 
— a life-long development. 

" In my early years, it was my privilege to live 
in a Christian home in connection with the Pres- 
byterian church, to have a Christian mother, and 
to be taught to say 'Our Father which art in 
heaven/ I committed thoroughly to memory the 
Shorter Catechism. I attended a Presbyterian 
Sabbath-school. I heard only a Presbyterian 
ministry. I do not know that I ever was inside 
any other than a Presbyterian church until I was 



Addendum. 181 

seventeen or eighteen years of age. I assumed at 
the beginning, in a quiet, easy way, without think- 
ing about it, that everything in the Catechism and 
Confession of Faith was perfectly true. With this 
same complacent assumption, I went to the Theo- 
logical Seminary. I do not know that, during the 
three years I spent in that institution, I ever 
thought of sitting in judgment, or forming any 
opinions for myself on doctrinal points. I felt 
that all I had to do was to sit and receive, as a tub 
takes in everything which comes from the spout, 
and then go out and preach it. 

" This is one side. I had that schooling. I do not 
regret it. 

" I see, however, that from childhood I had a 
different schooling. I had memorized a definition 
of sin ; but I did not think much about its signifi- 
cance. But in my early years I found myself 
doing things which my own conscience condemned, 
and which I saw the Word of God condemned. 
I thus received a lesson about sin which made me 
shink, and brought it home to my own heart. I 
learned other lessons in the same way. I tried to 
give up overt, sinful acts. I formed resolutions to 
give them up, and then found myself drifting away 
again, like a reed on the current, into the old way 
which I had so solemnly made up my mind to aban- 
don. 

" Thus I began to learn the truth about human 
depravity and helplessness. This led me to Christ, 
where I began to learn something of his grace. 
I went away many a time, w T hen about ten or twelve 
or fourteen years of age — away among the bushes, 
into the fields or into the woods, to pray and sing ; 
and I often experienced at such times such a sense 



182 Progressive Thought 

of the Saviour's love,, as kept me weeping there 
for joy. I was learning, as I could not get it from 
books, the truth about a Saviour's love, and a Sa- 
viour's forgiving grace. 

" In these hours of rejoicing there was not a 
cloud on my mind ; heaven seemed near, and it 
appeared but a little way to the better land. I 
had no doubt at such times, if I were called to go, 
that I would find my place among the redeemed. 
At other times I had such a sense of darkness, 
coldness, apathy, and my own great sinfulness, 
that I doubted whether I ever knew anything of 
a Saviour's redeeming grace. I had sometimes 
confidence and joy, and sometimes doubt and 
trouble." 

And after a brief history of the leadings and 
dealings of Providence with him, his struggles 
with traditional errors and hereditary evils, and 
his development and growth in spiritual life, he 
concludes as follows : — 

" But I had another lesson in the school of ex- 
perience to which I must refer in conclusion. 

"After I learned the fact of a redeemed human 
nature, I was so taken up with Christ and the 
revelation of the infinite riches of his grace, that 
I had neither time nor heart for the study of sys- 
tematic theology. I supposed that what was con- 
tained in the Confession of Faith, and so fully 
presented in Dr. Hodge's Theology, was true ; but 
it seemed to be so far away from the heart and 
need of the church and the world, that I felt no 
particular interest in it. If I did turn at any 
time to these books, I received so little spiritual 
food from them, that I soon laid them down. 



Addendum. 183 

" But one day — I do not remember where nor 
when, perhaps nearly ten years ago, I remember 
it well — there came to me, as in a Sash, what will 
take some minutes to tell. It was this : I saw that 
I had been born and raised a Presbyterian ; that 
in my childhood I had assumed, in a quiet, easy 
way, without reflection, that my parents and church 
were right in their beliefs ; that with this assump- 
tion I had started out and studied, learned, and 
preached until that hour. What I had learned of 
doctrine from my parents and church might be 
true, or it might not. At least, so far as I was 
concerned, it was only a traditional faith. I saw 
that if I had been born and trained in some other 
church I would have been something else, a Meth- 
odist, a Baptist, a Quaker, a Roman Catholic, or 
a Mohammedan for the same reason that I was a 
Presbyterian, because I had been born and trained 
in that faith. This discovery did not trouble me ; 
because all that was precious to me, all I had 
learned in the school of Christ and from his Word 
remained, and I knew it to be true, and beyond 
doubt forever. 

"As to these doctrines [which I had learned 
from my parents, from the Catechism, and at the 
Presbyterian Theological School], I felt assured 
that if I was in error, I might and would yet learn 
and receive the truth. I saw two ways open to 
me ; the one was to assume, as I had done in the 
beginning, that what my church believed was the 
truth, and then confirm myself in it more and more 
by argument drawn from reason and revelation, 
and then preach it and die and go to the judgment 
to discover whether I was in truth or error. I saw 
some attractions in this way. It would leave me 



184 Progressive Thought 

undisturbed in my ecclesiastical relations. I would 
be reputed orthodox. My earthly support and 
that of my family would be assured as long as I 
was able to preach ; and the best places in the 
church would be open to me. 

" The other way was, to go to Christ as the Great 
Teacher, and give myself up to Him to be led into 
all truth, that He might give me the desire to 
know and the eyes to see the truth, in his Provi- 
dence bring it before me, make me honest in the 
reception of it, and give me courage to proclaim 
it to others. I saw that this way had some draw- 
backs. It might lead me into reputed error, and 
bring me into worldly straits. I might become 
unpopular, be regarded with suspicion, lose caste 
in the church, and with it my place and support. 
I might be tried for heresy and condemned, and 
the multitude might cry out, ' away with him.' 

"But with these two ways open before me, and 
all that was involved on the one side and on the 
other, in full view as it is this hour, I did not hesi- 
tate one moment ; but I instantly bowed, and laid 
my creed and all I had learned from men at my 
Saviour's feet, and said: 'Lord, I am thine; take 
me, lead me, teach me the truth, and make me 
faithful unto death.' Since that day I can call no 
man master on earth. One is my master, even 
Christ, and all ye are brethren. Before that, when 
I heard and read, it was with the assumption that 
a certain system of doctrine was true. But after 
that, it was a man who desired to know the truth, 
and w T as willing to learn from any person ; but 
could receive nothing until he saw it for himself. 

" There was no sudden clearing up in my views 
on any subject ; but little by little I found my 



Addendum, 185 

mind going out on one thing and another in quest 
of truth. Sometimes it was months after a ques- 
tion was raised before it came to a full settlement, 
as it sooner or later did. Thus many things came 
up without any effort on my part, and were re- 
viewed and settled, until I had gone over nearly 
the entire field of systematic theology. On review, 
I found that I had not a bundle of disconnected 
beliefs, but a closely jointed and well arranged 
system of truth, in perfect harmony with all the 
facts of Christian consciousness and experience, 
with all natural and spiritual laws, and w r ith all 
the teachings of the Word of God : a system which 
exalts the Lord, justifies his ways to man, and 
magnifies his grace and truth, and man's everlast- 
ing dependence for all things upon his adorable 
Name. 

" I am glad I ever came to Christ ; came to Him 
in my guilt for pardon ; came to Him in my de- 
pravity and helplessness for a redeemed nature; 
came to Him in my ignorance for instruction. 
While I have learned much, yet I feel that all I 
have learned is as nothing compared with the infi- 
nite things I do not know; and I rejoice in the 
belief that in a Saviour's Love and Wisdom I shall 
advance forever. 

" Some of the results of my investigations I have 
summed up in the statement which I read before 
Presbytery to-day. Without entering upon any 
argument in defence of these view r s, I leave my 
case, Fathers and Brethren, in your hands. I have 
brotherly love for you all ; and I believe you re- 
ciprocate that feeling. But much as I love you, 
and much as I enjoy being associated with you in 
ministerial fellowship, since I stand here as I do 



186 Progressive Thought 

to-day, I greatly prefer to go out — if it must come 
to that — where I will be perfectly free to follow 
the Lord alone, and to preach according to the 
enlightenment He gives me, rather than remain in 
the church to be regarded with suspicion, to be 
called in question for following Christ in the only 
way I can, and to be regarded as unfaithful while 
I give due heed to my ordination vows 'to main- 
tain the truths of the Gospel, and the purity and 
peace of the church, whatever opposition or per- 
secution may arise to me on that account/ 

" It has been intimated that we are c in the morn- 
ing of a New Age. I fondly hope and believe 
that this is true : An age of greater light and free- 
dom — an age of progress in everything which re- 
lates to human well-being in this world or the 
world to come. The kingdom of God will yet 
come among men on earth — the kingdom of right- 
eousness and peace and universal brotherhood 
among men. This will be accomplished when all 
men have learned the depth of their own sinful- 
ness, and have learned to receive, and to live from, 
that redeemed and divinely human nature which 
is offered them in Christ. To be co-workers with 
God, agents actuated by his Spirit, in hastening 
on that day of liberty, light and love among men, 
is our highest privilege on earth; and whatever 
self-sacrifice it requires, it should be our meat and 
drink — the very joy of our lives. 

"And now, Fathers and Brethren, if you, sitting 
in judgment on the views I have expressed, think 
that I should no longer remain in the ministry of 
the Presbyterian church, I desire you to take the 
responsibility, and say so without hesitancy. And 
however much I may think you have erred, I will 



Addendum. 187 

not entertain any ill-will against you on that ac- 
count. In case you think that I should not re- 
main, I will go, as Abraham did, when he went 
out not knowing whither he went. I will go out 
without a doubt or fear — go out in entire confi- 
dence that the Lord who has led me through all 
the years gone by, will lead me safely to my jour- 
ney's end. 

" Oh ! that the day may speedily come, when God's 
people will be one. Oh! that the day may speed- 
ily come, when all contentions and strife among 
men shall cease; when differences of opinion shall 
disappear ; or, if they do not disappear, when men 
shall have charity to bear with each other in love, 
and dwell together as brethren in the one church 
of Christ. But come what will, looking to the 
Lord Jesus for the spirit of consecration, I give 
myself to Him, and consecrate what is left of life 
to proclaiming the Gospel of the grace of God to 
all men." 

At the conclusion of the trial, it was resolved, 
as the report before me says, 

"That Presbytery having found, after a full 
trial, that the views held and taught by the Rev. 
J. W. White are contrary to the standards of the 
Presbyterian church, at his ow r n request, ht be 
permitted to withdraw from the ministry of the 
Presbyterian church." 

On the adoption of this resolution, Mr. White 
asked leave to withdraw from the ministry of that 
church ; and the request being granted, his name 
w T as dropped from the roll of Presbytery. After- 
wards the following resolution was offered, and 



188 Progressive Thought. 

after many expressions by the brethren of frater- 
nal regard for Mr. White, was unanimously passed 
by Presbytery : — 

" That, in complying with this request, the Pres- 
bytery desire to place on record their high appre- 
ciation of the Christian character of Mr. White, 
and their entire confidence in his personal piety." 

And so it has come to be a matter of record, 
that a man thoroughly trained for the Christian 
ministry, may possess a " Christian character " of 
an exalted type, and " his personal piety " be worthy 
of "entire confidence," and yet be deemed unfit to 
preach in a Presbyterian church. And this is 
thought to be " evangelical ! " And the Presby- 
terian church claims to be a Christian church ! 



^^^M^^^^ 



IS THE NEW CHURCH EVANGELICAL?* 

BY REV. JULIAN K. SMYTH. 

" Is the New Church Evangelical? " If for my 
subject I may not claim that it is of vital import- 
ance, it may at least be imagined that, to those 
who claim to be of the Church, it has a deep, an 
almost tender interest. If one may acknowledge 
the Lord Jesus Christ as his God and Saviour, if 
one may try to take up his cross and follow in 
his footsteps, if one may believe the Scriptures as 
the inspired Word of God, loving the Gospels and 
the Life they reveal, never doubting them, cling- 
ing to them, teaching them diligently to his chil- 
dren — if, in a word, one may try to make his faith 
and life essentially Christian, only to have the 
Church which has taught and ministered to him 
so misunderstood, so misrepresented, as to be 

* [Copied, with the author's permission, from The New 
Jerusalem Magazine for January, 1887. 

Mr. Smyth is a duly accredited minister of the New 
Church, has been teaching its doctrines for eight or ten 
years, and is now the pastor of one of its most flourish- 
ing societies. What he says on the subject here treated, 
may therefore be accepted as the verdict of the entire 
body of professed Newchurchmen, or of all intelligent 
readers and receivers of the doctrines of this Church. — 
Ed.] 

189 



190 Addendum. 

loosely classed as " mystical/' " spiritualistic/' 
"rationalistic," then, surely, it were not amiss that 
we should press this question upon the attention 
of the world. It matters not that Newchurchmen 
should be spoken of in terms of respect and even 
flattery. It is the Church, the mother of. our 
souls, whom God has commanded us to honor, and 
from whose breasts we have drawn consolation; 
the Church which sets before us but one Lord, 
which guards his Word, which reveres his sacra- 
ments, that is dishonored. 

But precisely because our subject is one which 
does strike home, we need the more care to speak 
temperately, justly, and, above all, in the spirit of 
Christian forbearance and charity. Every Chris- 
tian is exposed to the temptation to which even 
John once yielded, when he came to the Lord and 
said, — thinking, evidently, that he had done Him 
a service : " Master, we saw one casting out devils 
in thy name, and he followeth not us ; and we 
forbade him, because he followeth not us." But 
Jesus said, " Forbid him not ; for there is no man 
which shall do a miracle in my name, that can 
lightly speak evil of me. For he that is not 
against us is, on our part." 

Now I think that the surest safeguard against 
religious intolerance, is to see the relation of the 
special truth which we entertain to the Infinite 
Truth itself. All truth is related to God as its 



Is the New Church Evangelical? 191 

source. All revelations are the Divine manifesta- 
tions of that Truth, that Word, that creative 
Logos which was in the beginning with God and 
which was God. All religions, therefore, express 
in more or less perfect forms, the truths of the 
Infinite One, which are ever trying to shape them- 
selves, and, as it w r ere, give birth to themselves in 
the most ignorant minds. Our great mistake con- 
sists in imagining that religions create truth. And 
with this delusion comes narrowness, intolerance. 
" This is my truth," Churches say, " and mine only. 
God has given me an exclusive right to it ! " As 
if with our little fingers we could thus localize the 
kingdom of heaven ! Or as if the Lord had never 
said, " I am the light of the world ! " Christianity 
itself suffers from such narrowness. For it seems 
to me that we can only appreciate its essential 
grandeur and feel its truthfulness when we think 
of it as the clear and perfect revelation of that 
Word or Truth which was in the beginning, and 
which in a thousand strange, imperfect forms 
has been trying to express itself through the sym- 
bols and mythologies of older religions. 

The founder of the Christian religion said that 
He was come to fulfill all righteousness, and thus 
He became universal in his character. " Before 
Abraham was," He said, " I am." Do we say, 
then, that He created the truth of love to the 
neighbor, or of immortality, at the time of his 



192 Addendum. 

personal coming, and that we should look up to 
Him gratefully and with perfect faith, because, as 
it were, He made these truths for us Christians, 
while unnumbered generations were forced to 
grope in the darkness ? Shall the Christian say : 
" I should believe the law of love because no other 
religion ever heard of it before?" No, my 
brethren, this is false in principle and false in 
fact. Before Abraham ? Aye, back to the very 
centre and source of all creation, the Saviour of 
men traced his divine lineage. " In the beginning 
was the Word." And so much of the truth as man 
could understand to his good, be he Oriental or 
Occidental, has always been revealed. Revealed, 
not created. Brought to light, made plain to the 
eye, and not newly constructed. So that the his- 
tory of the Churches is a history of the successive 
revelations of truth whose antiquity is lost in the 
being and eternity of God. Churches are new 
in the sense that they are enabled to see and 
announce new unveilings of God's truth. 

So with regard to the New Church. The Church 
is new — not in the sense that it is a substitute for 
Christianity; something in advance of the religion 
established by our Lord — but new in its under- 
standing of what the teachings of the Lord really 
are. The system of truth we hold, claims to open 
up the Word of God in its genuine, primitive, 
Divine meaning. The interpretation may be new, 



Is the New Church Evangelical t 193 

but the truth itself — the eternal Logos which it 
discloses — stretches away back to God. 

Always, I believe religion to have descended a 
heavenly gift — a gift which men once possessed in 
its beauty. But in time they marred and disfigured 
it. They distorted and perverted it until "its 
beauty became stained, and its strength became 
weakness, and its life decayed, and its words no 
longer had power to save." Darkness covered the 
earth and gross darkness the people. But slowly, 
patiently God laid the w T ay for a new and more 
perfect manifestation of Himself to man. A Scrip- 
ture was given which, plainly, or under symbols, 
should be the expression of God's thought and will 
to man — should set forth hopes to which men are 
still clinging, should speak the word of consola- 
tion for the mourners of all ages, but, more than 
all, reveal the figure of the Lord, so full of love, 
of brightness, of spiritual majesty, — Him who, in 
his perfect humanity, stood calmly before the 
world and said, " I am the Truth." What ages 
had been preparing for, what religions had been 
reaching out for, is come at last ! The world's 
Comforter, its Truth, its Life is here ! In Him, 
as in no prophet, no saint, no reformer, the Divine 
and the Human are so fully met, so exquisitely 
blended, so perfectly related to all that we can do 
or suffer, that we can only fall at his feet and cry, 
" My Lord and my God." 
13 



194 Addendum. 

And here, as if at his feet, I put my question: 
"Is the New Church evangelical?" For years 
a large portion of the Christian world has said, 
" No ! " It has said your doctrines are fanciful, 
contrary to the received standards, and therefore 
you are not evangelical. I would not wrest this 
title from any Church, were I able to do so. 
Would to God we were all truly evangelical! 
For what is an evangelical Church ? What does 
this word "evangelical" mean? Our lexicons 
say: "Relating to the Gospel; agreeable to the 
Gospel." The definition is simple. An evangelical 
Church is one whose teachings and whose life are 
in agreement with the Gospel. In this definition 
I have added the important factor of a true life. 
You know the authority for this ; for our Lord 
said: " If ye continue in my Word, than are ye 
my disciples indeed." What definition could be 
simpler, truer, more comprehensive? " If ye con- 
tinue in my Word, then are ye my disciples in- 
deed." Nor is this the only passage of the kind. 
" By this shall all men know that ye are my dis- 
ciples, if ye have love one to another." " If a 
man- love me, he will keep my words; and my 
Father will love him, and we will come unto him 
and make our abode with him." To be " evan- 
gelical" means simply to believe and live accord- 
ing to the Gospel. It is a spiritual requisite ; and 
God, not man, nor even Church councils, must 



Is the New Church Evangelical? 195 

pass upon that. For I hold that whoever looks 
to the Lord Jesus Christ as his Saviour, and, to 
the best of his understanding, applies the teach- 
ings of the Gospels to his life, is a Christian and 
a disciple wherever he be, or whatever his name. 

And who, we may justly ask, has abolished the 
law of discipleship of our Lord? By whose 
authority is a portion of the Christian Church 
named " evangelical/' while* the rest must bear 
the stigma of being " dissenters/" " non-con- 
formists/' " heretics " [" non-evangelical "], and 
the like ? 

What, then, has become of the peace and purity 
of the early Church? They deemed it honor 
enough to be followers of the Lord Jesus ; and all 
who confessed his name were, in their eyes, breth- 
ren — yes, brethren, with whom they shared w T hat 
goods Providence had given them, and with whom 
they labored day and night for the one cause that 
was near to their hearts. But how changed now 
is the condition of the Church ? Paul had written : 
" I beseech you, that ye walk worthy of the vo- 
cation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness 
and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one 
another in love ; endeavoring to keep the unity of 
the spirit in the bond of peace;'* but a change 
came when the Church was converted from a 
spiritual into a civil power. For then ambition, 
greed, falsities, and iniquities invaded its walls 



196 Addendum. 

and thrust out charity, without which genuine 
faith can never endure. 

And since that day the Church has rung with 
anathemas and with the voices of angry dispu- 
tants, and even now is not without its enmities. A 
certain ecclesiastical authority and supremacy, 
based upon disputed historical grounds, rather 
than upon spiritual fitness, has been urged. By 
appellation, Christian communities are divided 
into those who are " evangelical " and those who 
are not. The Lord's simple rule of Christian dis- 
cipleship has been substituted by another so essen- 
tially different that between the two there is no 
real connection. For, says our lexicon again: 
"This word [evangelical], which means simply 
appertaining to or characteristic of the Gospel, 
has been applied to a portion of the Church who 
either profess or are supposed to know and incul- 
cate the Gospel in an especial manner, and to give 
peculiar prominence to the doctrine of salvation 
by faith in the atonement. The title of evangelical 
seems to have undergone some change in its mean- 
ing from that which it bore when it was first 
used,- and is now not unfrequently adopted as 
synonymous with Calvinist." Brethren, I am not 
here to attack the beliefs of any man or Church; 
but, in the name of the Christian religion, I ask 
by whose authority was such a qualification ever 
substituted for the law of Jesus Christ? 



Is the New Church Evangelical? 107 

A little more than one hundred years ago, while 
Romanism and Protestantism were still panting 
from the struggle of the Reformation, a voice 
might have been heard speaking calmly to the 
world. Unnoticed, almost unheard, it sounded on. 
There was no bitterness in its tone. Whilst Ro- 
manism was anathematizing the unbeliever, and 
Protestantism w T as preaching a God of vengeance, 
who would condemn every soul that was not jus- 
tified by faith, this new voice declared as its cen- 
tral doctrine that God was love, — infinite, absolute 
love, — abounding in mercy for the sinner and the 
unbeliever ; and that a good life, guided by faith, 
was the test of true discipleship. Slowly, peace- 
fully, but few noticing it, this doctrine began to 
unfold itself. It solved the mystery of the Trinity 
by declaring Jesus Christ to have been the mani- 
festation of God in a human form and nature 
like our own, who redeemed mankind " in his love 
and in his pity" by enduring the temptations 
which assail us, overcoming them, and so subduing 
the demoniac world and setting men free. It 
opened the Scriptures as once the Lord had opened 
them to his disciples, showing their hidden glories, 
and establishing their Divinity upon a new and 
enduring basis. It told of the future life, ex- 
plained some of the laws which govern there; 
showed that man is essentially a spiritual being, 
endowed with a spiritual body ; that death is but 



J 98 Addendum. 

the removal of his physical part, and that the life 
after death is real, thrilling, earnest. It enjoined 
charity to all men, fealty to the Lord, and a life 
of devoted usefulness. And this same voice went 
on to say that an era of golden liberty was dawn- 
ing upon the world, and that in this unveiling 
of the Word of God, with its revelation of num- 
berless truths, the Lord was coming to the souls 
of men in power and great glory. 
- I speak of this revelation as a voice. And yet 
it was not the voice of a preacher, ringing out 
like that of John the Baptist; employing no elo- 
quence like that of Chrysostom the "golden- 
mouthed;" resorting to no impassioned pleas like 
those of Whitefield or Massillon. It was the 
voice of the truth, which has sounded from time 
to time through the world's ages, finding utter- 
ance through the well-trained mind of a calm, 
sober Christian. No terrifying cry of lo ! here, 
or lo! there. Books were the evangelists, human 
hearts the temple. It was as if God had said, 
" Let there be light," and after years of cloud and 
night, the Word of the Lord — the creative Logos, 
the great Sun of righteousness — had once more 
come forth with healing in his wings. 

Concerning this New Church, I should like to 
show, did time permit, how it does not aim to 
become a mere sect among sects, much less to 
supersede Christianity, but that its mission is to 



Is the New Church Evangelical? 199 

set forth primitive Christianity in newness and 
fullness, and to lay before the thoughtful con- 
sideration of men a system of doctrine and of 
Bible interpretation which, to our eyes at least, 
has transfigured the teachings of [last century's] 
religion. But, while this cannot now be under- 
taken, I may at least be permitted to consider 
some misconceptions concerning the New Church 
which tend to limit its full usefulness, deterring 
many from giving it that candid examination 
which it deserves, and which has rarely failed to 
amply reward the inquirer. 

Through some cause, I know not what, there is 
a common impression that the New Church does 
not hold firmly to the vital truths of Christianity ; 
that we have rejected its corner-stone, and are 
trying to build upon another. We do not com- 
plain of open assault so much as of those misap- 
prehensions and insinuations which have led many 
conscientious persons to regard the New Church 
as indifferent to the essentials of religion, and have 
even caused them to believe that while we have 
many beautiful doctrines, — as concerning death 
and the future life, — nevertheless, that our whole 
system is fanciful ; that it rests only upon the word 
of Swedenborg, and that in this religion the Lord 
Jesus Christ and the Bible are either slighted or 
denied. Amazing charge to bring against a 
Church which worships Jesus Christ as God! 



200 Addendum. 

Strange accusation to urge against a religious 
body which now, in the hour when so many are 
recanting their faith in the plenary inspiration of 
the Scripture which is being assaulted as never 
before, proclaims, as it has always proclaimed, its 
unfaltering belief in its Divinity! Oh, it is time 
that the world knew the Church better than it 
knows it now. It is time that men of other creeds, 
and of no creed, should recognize in the New Chu r ch 
a strong ally of the religion of the Saviour. I do 
not presume to ask that all shall see the claims or 
the teachings of this Church as we see them ; but 
now, in these days of religious perplexity, when 
former beliefs seem passing away, and when there 
is such need for unity, I speak for fairness of judg- 
ment and an honest examination of those truths 
which many have found an unfailing source of 
strength and consolation. It is not for me to 
speak of the life of the Church. I make no boast 
of spiritual faithfulness. Yet I can affirm that 
these teachings, instead of being mere vagaries, as 
many suppose, are practical to a degree ; that they 
insist at every turn upon charity to the neighbor; 
urge use and honest living as the only test worthy 
of religion; enjoin us to be devout, believing men, 
and bring us as suppliants to the Lord Jesus 
Christ as the one and only Object of our adora- 
tion. 

For the orthodoxy of this religion I plead. You 



Is the New Church Evangelical f 201 

cannot judge of its life by the pulse of another. 
You will never do it justice if you approach it 
from a mere curiosity to hear its declarations con- 
cerning the future world and life. These are but 
the sky of the picture, radiant and deep; but 
under this sweep of blue lies the valley of life, 
with its human beings throbbing with hopes and 
fears, joys and sorrows, pains and temptations. 
To these the Church appeals and ministers. The 
New Church aims to be essentially Christian. She 
re-affirms the teachings of our Lord, presents his 
life as the only real life to follow, and acknowl- 
edges his providence in every event that befalls us. 

As for the evangelicism of the Church, what 
more can I say than that every doctrine she puts 
forth is based upon what she believes to be the 
teachings of the Word of God ? More than this 
cannot be asked of any religion. Examine these 
teachings in the light, not of creeds of man's 
making, but of the Word of God. Evidently it 
would be impossible to institute such an examina- 
tion in a complete form in the few moments that 
remain to me. The New Church, however, insists 
upon three things as essential to a true Christian 
faith : the divinity of the Lord, the divinity and 
inspiration of the Scriptures, and a good life. 
These we may briefly examine. 

Of the Lord we not only declare Him to be the 
perfect embodiment of infinite love and wisdom, 



202 Addendum. 

the Head of the Church, " the Way, the Truth, 
and the Life," but we declare Him to be God 
himself, made manifest to men through the assump- 
tion of a human nature like our own, that He 
might " bow the heavens and come down," redeem 
men from spiritual bondage and become man's Sa- 
viour, w T ho, in his glorified humanity, is God over 
all, yet immanent u in all the experiences of human 
life." The Father is in the Son, as man's soul is 
within his body; the Holy Spirit proceeds from 
the Father by the Son, as man's power proceeds 
into act from his soul by means of his body. The 
Divine Trinity in the Lord is of the same nature 
as the finite trinity in man ; the Father, Son, and 
Holy Spirit being one Lord in one person, as the 
soul, the body, and the life of man are one man. 
Is this contrary to the Gospels ? or is this confes- 
sion of the Deity of Christ and the unity of God 
in harmony with his own declarations: " I and the 
Father are one ; " " He that hath seen me, hath 
seen the Father;" " Believe me, that I am in the 
Father, and the Father in me." What Church 
can take higher ground than this? Is not this 
making the Lord the all in all? " The Alpha and 
the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First 
and the Last?" Nay, will any Church that calls 
itself " evangelical " affirm as absolutely the Deity 
of Christ? 

We believe the Scriptures to be a full and per- 



Is the New Church Evangelical? 203 

feet revelation of our duties to God and man. 
We believe that within its histories, prophecies, 
its laws and injunctions, are contained yet higher 
planes of meaning, which are the expression of 
God's love and wisdom, and which are all symbol- 
ized in the letter. This does not imply that we 
deny the outward or literal sense in which the 
Word is given to us, anymore than a belief in the 
soul implies a rejection of the body within which 
it is contained. On the contrary, this inner spirit- 
ual sense gives to the letter a new value and a 
higher authority, distinguishing it from every 
other book on earth, and filling it with a grace and 
uplifting power which millions have felt and do 
still feel, and which are in exact corroboration 
of what the Lord said : " The words that I speak 
unto you, they are spirit and they are life. ,, 
Contrasted with the growing timidity in almost 
every Church, to heartily confess the plenary in- 
spiration of Scripture, does this doctrine of the 
New Church seem loose or heretical? 

A true Christian life we believe to be a life of 
faith and charity. We are enjoined to resist evils 
as sins against God ; to do good in the acknowl- 
edgment that all the merit belongs to Him ; to 
love our Lord above all things and our neighbor 
as ourselves. The duties of prayer and repent- 
ance, the sanctity of the sacraments, are all em- 
phasized with solemn earnestness, and leave no 



204 Addendum. 

room for the insinuation that the New Church is 
indifferent to the exercises of true religion. 

Is, then, the New Church evangelical? Must 
it ever remain suspected of ignoring the Gospels ? 
Shall our Christian neighbors continue to think of 
it as a mere " ism " in the great world of religion, 
and be content to form their judgment from cur- 
rent rumors as trifling and absurd, many of them, 
as they are current ? The day for mere personal 
vituperation or contempt has gone by. But the 
time still is, when many pass lightly over our faith 
for no better reason than that we are thought to 
be " mystics," "spiritists," and the like. We are 
thought to have brought new and strange gods 
within our temples. "They discard the Bible," 
says one; "they deny the Divinity of Christ," 
says another ; " they worship Swedenborg," claims 
a third. Well, brethren, these things are hard to 
bear — not so much because they place us in a false 
position, as because they reduce the influence of 
the Church. 

The world is reaching out, as never before, for 
a knowable, personal God. The most reverent 
minds are trying to behold God in Christ. Every- 
where I believe there are traces of a growing re- 
action against the skepticism of the present and of 
the last centuries. Pantheism has been tried, but 
has been found too cold and impersonal. Material- 
ism has been tried, but proved repulsive. De- 



Is the New Church Evangelical f 205 

structive criticism has laid siege to the Gospels, 
but somehow the Gospels stand. We have had our 
"mythical theories,' ' which would fain have re- 
duced Christ to the cold, sweet image of a dream ; 
but if there is one fact in the history of the world 
which stands unshaken, one fact which seems to 
fairly challenge the reverence of men, it is the 
real personality of Christ. And now what seems 
so hard is, that with this return, as one may say, 
to the adoration of the Saviour, the Church which 
from the beginning has preached God in Christ 
and maintained Him as the sole Object of its wor- 
ship, should be so misunderstood as actually to be 
suspected of denying Him and his Gospels! 

Still, we are not to falter. A wisdom greater 
than ours directs the ways of men. A love deeper 
than ours yearns for them. If the house be worthy, 
God's peace will rest upon it. The Church is in 
the world, that she may do her share in the work 
of saving souls. With her, as with every Church, 
this work is slow. Only by degrees does the heart 
yield to the demands of truth; only by degrees 
does it turn away from the sorcery of the world to 
the kingdom of the Lord; only by degrees does 
the Church save a single life, and with its evils 
bound, its virtues free, lead it to the feet of the 
Master. 

THE END. 



Publications of the Swedenborg Pub. Association. 
THE GOLDEN CITY. 

Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged. 

By B. F. BARRETT. 

311 pp., 5J X 7 inches ; price, 50 cts., cloth ; 25 cts., stiff paper 

covers. To ministers and theological students, 35 

cts., cloth ; and 20 cts., paper covers. 



"We believe this is the most important book concerning the 
New Church which has been written for years. Its extensive 
circulation in and out of the New-Church organization, would 
do very great good. It would tend to rescue us from the sec- 
tarian feeling which there is but too great reason to fear has 
been growing upon us within a few years ; and . . would 
bring back our minds to clearer, more exalted and truthful con- 
ceptions of the real nature and object of the New Dispensation. " 
— New-Church Magazine (Boston) — in notice of 1st edition. 

" The work will commend itself to liberal minds of every 
denomination — for its spirit is catholic, its views comprehensive, 
and its temper sweet." — Boston Daily Advertiser. 

"The work is from the real New Church stand-point, able in 
execution and catholic in spirit." — The Living Way. 

"This treatise is thoroughly liberal, and will undoubtedly 
contribute to popularizing and expanding a form of faith that 
has grown quietly without such a valuable help." — The North 
American and United States Gazette (Phila.). 

" The volume is pervaded by a large, free, and truly catholic 
spirit, which is likely to render it acceptable to all who are 
striving for unity without uniformity among Christian be- 
lievers." — Evening Transcript (Boston). 

" Mr. Barrett has written and published numerous works of 
great value and interest, but none, we think, of more value and 
service than 'The Golden City/ . . The reader will rise 
from its perusal with a broader, more catholic, more charitable, 
more Christian spirit. 

"In a supplementary chapter Mr. Barrett has cited largely 
from the writings of the Hon. Theophilus Parsons; . . from 
which it appears that Mr. Parsons and Mr. Barrett are in com- 
plete accord in their views." — A. D. R. in New-Church Inde- 
pendent. 
Address Swedenborg Publishing Association, 

Germantown, Philadelphia, Pa. 
8 



Publications of the Swedenborg Pub. Association. 



A BISHOP'S GUN REVERSED. Being an A ttack on the New 
Church by the late Bishop Burgess, and the reply 

theret ° Br B. F. BARRETT. 

206pp.,4X6inches; price, 25cts., cloth; 15 cts. in paper cover. 



CONTEXTS. 
Swedenborgianism: by Bishop Burgess. Episcopalianism in Three Parts: 
by B F Barrett, Audi alteram partem. Part I. Episcopalianism in Its 
Own Dress. Part II. Episcopalianism in Borrowed Robes. Part III. 
Episcopalianism at the Confessional. 



The reply to the Bishop's Attack appeared first in a 
separate form. Its method is peculiar— the very lan- 
guage of the assailant being used as far as possible, but 
with a different application. It is this fact which sug- 
gested the present title. The Attack is now published 
along with the Reply. This was done at the solicitation 
of an intelligent brother, who wrote : — 

cl Some think your book rather harsh, except when read along 
with the Bishop's Attack. In such cases the effect produced is 
excellent. . . . By all means have the Attack added." 

In a "Prefatory Note" to the new edition, the 
author says : — 

"I ought, perhaps, to add, that my remarks were not meant 
to be leveled at the estimable people known as Episcopalians, 
but only at that narrow, bigoted, and unprogressive portion of 
their church, represented by Bishop Burgess and his pamphlet. 
It is to the honor of the Episcopal Church, and proves its title to 
the claim of catholicity, that its ministers are allowed to read 
and preach the doctrines of heaven as revealed through Swe- 
denborg, undisturbed, as the several cases cited in Parts II. and 
III. clearly show." 
Address Swedenborg Publishing Association, 

Germantown, Philadelphia, Pa. 

14 



FOOTPRINTS OF THE SAVIOUR. Devotional Studies in 
the Life and Nature of our Lord. 

By Rev. JULIAN K. SMYTH. 
230 pp., 4 J X 7 inches ; price, $1.00, cloth, gilt top. 



CONTENTS. 

The Footprints— I. The Christ-Child— II. The Carpenter of Nazareth— III. 
The Christ— IV. His Sympathy— V. His Temptations— VI. His Sanc- 
tity— VII. His Majesty— VIII. His Sacrifice— IX. His Eternal Pres- 
ence. 

"The devout and honest mind will find great wealth of 
spiritual meaning in this pregnant volume.' ' — Boston Herald. 

" The reader's interest is sustained throughout, and to 
earnest souls it is full of inspiration to follow in the footsteps of 
Him who is the Way, the Truth and the Life." — Boston E ceil- 
ing Traveler. 

"This book should be hailed with joy by all earnest New- 
churchmen as marking the beginning of a new era in our litera- 
ture. ' ' — B in New- Church Messenger. 

" Written in a truly religious spirit, — a spirit of love to God 
and helpfulness to men." — Boston Post. 

"The devout reader who enters into the spirit of the author, 
cannot fail to be uplifted by the reading." — The Advance (Chi- 
cago). 

"Written in cordial sympathy with the religious needs and 
experiences of the individual soul. The author's purpose to be 
helpful appears all through the work." — The Churchman (Epis- 
copal). 

"No Christian can read this book devoutly without having 
his faith made clearer and his love to the Saviour increased. " 
—New York Observer (Presbyterian). 

"The author keeps himself for the most part on the broad 
ground where all believers can meet him, and read what he has 
written with pleasure and profit." — The Independent (New 
York). 

"This book will afford a spiritual incentive, strength and 
comfort to many earnest Christians." — New York Tribune. 

" We have set down the author of these discourses as one of 
that not large company who work thought into the mental being 
of the reader." — The Christian Leader (Universalist). 

"A well-written, stimulating, and helpful book, made a most 
tasteful one by the publishers." — The Standard (Baptist). 

Address Swedenborg Publishing Association, 

Germantown, Philadelphia, Pa. 

16 



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